Only When I Sleep
by Esmerelda
Summary: After each episode airs, Buffy and Angel 'meet' in their dreams.
1. See You In My Dreams

TITLE: See You In My Dreams - Only When I Sleep 1  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Nothing is mine. Not even the idea - I kind of borrowed it from Serena and her LKND series (I asked first).  
TIMELINE: After Dracula v. Buffy.  
SPOILERS: See above. Those trying to stay spoiler free for season 5 TURN BACK NOW.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy dreams about Angel. Buffy's POV.  
DISTRIBUTION: Just give me an address!  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is the first in a series I'm planning - it's vaguely revisionist and will have Buffy dreaming of Angel after every season 5 episode. At least, that's the plan. I may run out of steam. Nice feedback would help :).  
AUTHOR'S NOTES 2: The title of this piece and the series both come from the song 'Only When I Sleep' by the Corrs.  
FEEDBACK: It gets hard to think of cute things to say here. Please just send some g.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
I looked groggily around at my surroundings. It took a second, but I realised that something was wrong. I was in a library.  
  
In fact, I was in THE library. As in, the burnt-down library that no longer existed.  
  
With my ex-boyfriend sitting quietly at a table, reading a dusty book.  
  
I approached, but he didn't react at all. No looking around, just calmly turning the pages, focusing on his book, not a care in the world.  
  
'What are you doing here?' I asked him when I was standing behind him.  
  
'I don't know,' he replied, infuriatingly calmly. 'It's your dream, Buffy.'  
  
'Are you here?' I asked hesitatingly.  
  
Now he did turn and look at me, seemingly amused. 'You can see me, can't you?'  
  
'Is that you you or me you?' I said, meaning was he a figment of my imagination, or tucked up in LA and dreaming this with me. It's not exactly unheard of for us to share dreams.  
  
'Does it matter?' he asked.  
  
'Yes,' I said, not sure why.  
  
'Well, surely you haven't imagined me,' he said, 'You wouldn't be dreaming about me, right?'  
  
'You're being cryptic,' I observed, 'And I always try not to imagine you cryptic, so ...'  
  
He smiled crookedly and didn't answer.  
  
'If you're not the real Angel,' I began, then reconsidered and stopped.  
  
'What?' he prompted gently.  
  
'Do you know what's going on with him?' I finished with difficulty, staring intently at his (it's? hers, even) right ear. 'I mean, how he is?'  
  
'He's doing okay,' the thing said, 'But for the purposes of this, I am the real Angel, Buffy. You're thinking of him, now. You're letting us through.'  
  
'For the purposes of what?' I said quickly.  
  
'Reassurance. Of you both,' he said. 'You two are losing the faith. You used to think you'd still get him back eventually. When did you stop believing that, Buffy?'  
  
'I don't know,' I barely whispered, feeling the first twinges of guilt. I didn't know when I'd stopped believing that - but I knew I'd never thought I would.  
  
'How quickly humans forget,' Angel's shade commented.  
  
'Has he forgotten?' I said, a panic I didn't care to analyse too deeply grabbing me.  
  
'I won't forget,' he said, falling swiftly into the first person. He stepped forward and cupped my cheek, gently lifting my chin to gaze into his eyes, and with a shock I realised that part of this thing certainly was Angel, or Angel was part of this thing, because every cell in my body screamed that my soulmate was standing in front of me.  
  
'You have to forget a little, Buffy,' he was carrying on, 'I understand that. It's the thought that the only parts you're remembering are the bad parts that worries me.'  
  
My eyes grew a little wet and I reached up to clasp his hand on my cheek, 'It's easier to carry on with Riley if I don't remember how it was with you,' I said quietly, aware that I was badmouthing my current to my former and not really caring.  
  
'Can't you take comfort in the good parts?' he asked, catching and holding my gaze once again.  
  
'I don't know how to,' I said hopelessly, 'I'm not as strong as you.'  
  
'Oh, Buffy ...' he breathed, and pulled me into his embrace, wrapping his arms around me and resting his head on top of mine. I relaxed into his familiar hold for the first time in over a year, pillowing my head on his chest.  
  
I pulled back with a slight frown, 'Have you been working out?'  
  
'A little,' he said with a laugh in his voice, 'You like?'  
  
'Yeah,' I said, absently testing the hardness of his torso with one hand slipping under his shirt. 'You're doing okay with the demons, then?'  
  
A shadow crossed his face for a moment and he smiled ruefully, 'I've made ... a couple of mistakes.'  
  
'Really?' I said in surprise.  
  
'Of course,' he said, surprised at my surprise.  
  
I looked hard at him for a beat, 'Well, don't give yourself too much hassle over them.' I gave a rueful smile of my own. 'You're probably still a ways behind me.'  
  
'You're growing up,' he said earnestly, 'You're supposed to...'  
  
'Screw up completely?' I said bluntly.  
  
'You're hunting again now,' he said firmly, and I wondered how he knew I hadn't done too much of my sacred duty last year.  
  
'Yeah. And that's going swell,' I said sarcastically, one hand coming up to check my neck where Dracula bit me.  
  
Angel's hand covered my own and brought it back down, leaving his fingers lightly interlaced with mine.  
  
'It won't scar,' he said positively.  
  
'Yours did,' I said, getting a jolt as I remembered the feel of his fangs in my throat, his lips on my neck, his weight covering mine as he fed from my body. I shivered and looked up at him, and saw the same memory reflected in his eyes as he unconsciously licked his lips.  
  
'Mine was meant,' he said eventually, but through that simple (and confusing) explanation I could hear his pleasure at the thought.  
  
'Meant for what?' I asked casually, but all I could think was that maybe this was why I saw such a lack of vamp action last year. A woman marked as the property of Angelus, his bite branded onto her neck, is a woman safe from most vampire attack, save that of another master.  
  
As a modern American woman I'm naturally offended at the thought of such primal 'belonging' to a man, but as a woman there's something appealing about it. It implies fidelity, speaks of faithfulness; says that "you're mine, and I'll come back for you".  
  
'Just meant,' he said playfully.  
  
'Are you going to come back for me?' I heard my voice ask Angel.  
  
I immediately disassociated myself from the comment. Unless I liked the answer, in which case I would reclaim it.  
  
'When you're ready,' he said patiently, flashing me a smirk.  
  
I stared up at him thoughtfully for a long moment.  
  
'I guess I can live with that,' I said slowly. 'Who decides when I'm ready?'  
  
'You,' he said, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.  
  
I thought about it. 'What if I said I was ready now?' I offered.  
  
'I'd know you were lying,' he replied dryly.  
  
'You always did,' I said, half in annoyance and half in loving resignation.  
  
'Always will,' he said, looking at me appraisingly.  
  
'What?' I said in alarm. 'Is this a bad hair dream and you didn't tell me?'  
  
'No,' he said, still looking at me with narrowed eyes. 'You need to go,' he said suddenly.  
  
'But I'm having a perfectly nice time,' I said, 'And I'm not done with you yet.'  
  
He smiled at me, a new one which I instinctively knew meant "you may state your point for me to ignore".  
  
'These dreams will be hard on you at first,' he said, 'It's not exactly just the usual product of your subconscious.'  
  
'No,' I said, 'You want to try one of the usual products of my subconscious with you in?'  
  
He looked sharply at me. Then he looked tempted.  
  
'No...' he said, looking a little reluctant.  
  
'Maybe another time,' I said, shrugging, 'There's going to be another time, isn't there?' I asked, a little fearfully, 'You just said they'd be hard at first ...'  
  
'Yeah, there'll be more,' he said, 'Whatever you need.'  
  
'I get to be in control?' I said eagerly.  
  
'More or less,' he said. 'You don't actually get to send a written request or anything. We'll know when you need me.'  
  
'I always need you,' I pouted.  
  
'And I'll be back,' he said quietly, coming in close to me, 'Really back,' looking deep into my eyes again, 'When I don't need you quite so much.'  
  
I didn't understand that, but he was gone, so I didn't get a chance to ask him.  
  
But I know I will.  
  
END  
  
  
I know it was a little rough - I was pretty much setting up the premise. Tell me what you thought, please! 


	2. Dream A Little Dream Of Me

TITLE: Dream A Little Dream Of Me  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 2  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Nothing and nobody are mine. They all belong to Joss. I'm just borrowing them really quickly.  
TIMELINE: After 'The Real Me' and 'Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been...'.  
SPOILERS: See above. Non-USA people trying to stay spoiler free for season 5; go away, please.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy dreams of Angel. Um, again.  
DISTRIBUTION: Ask if you want it (or take if you have the first one).  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: You might want to read the first installment, if you haven't already - it can be found at my site, http://bite.to/holdmysoul  
AUTHOR'S NOTES 2: 'Dream A Little Dream Of Me' is a song covered, I think, by the Beautiful South. I don't know who did it first.  
FEEDBACK: Please, yay or nay? ... and huge thanks to all who sent it for the first one, you're all wonderful.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
I walked quietly from the Sunnydale High library into my bedroom. Well, Dawn's bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully, despite the cool air that circulated through the open window. I headed purposefully over to the window and peered out.  
  
I'm not sure why I wasn't surprised to see him sitting out there, a dark mass framed against the dim glow from the streetlamp. He was staring out at nothing I could see, but he must have felt me there because he turned and looked at me. His teeth flashed in a welcoming smile.  
  
'Hi,' Angel said, 'I was waiting for you.'  
  
'Sorry,' I said, throwing one leg over the ledge and nimbly climbing over to settle next to him on the tiles. 'New vamp infestation.'  
  
'Big?' he said in concern, leaning back on his elbows, legs hanging over the edge. I copied his position, shifting to get comfortable. Where his whole calves were hanging over, only my feet did. I don't know why I always go for these men who tower above my head; probably some kind of subconscious desire to be looked after for once instead of having to do the looking after.  
  
'No,' I said, answering his question, 'Well, not exactly small, but stupid.' I laughed softly, 'Very stupid.' A thought occured to me and I frowned, turning to face him, 'Do you know if Cordelia knows her friend Harmony's been vamped?'  
  
He thought about it, 'I don't think so.' He looked at me, and there was a worry in his gaze, an affection for Cordelia that gave me a jealous twinge I really didn't care to examine deeply.  
  
'Should I tell her?' he was going on.  
  
'I don't think so,' I said slowly, 'We're trying to ... neutralise the problem.'  
  
'Neutralise the problem?' he said in disbelief.  
  
I caught myself. God, I was slipping into Riley terminology.  
  
'Spike's being kind of awkward,' I said, dismissing my blunder, 'He had this thing with her. Though they didn't exactly seem close at the time,' I observed idly.  
  
'Spike,' Angel repeated.  
  
'Is there an echo out here?' I teased. 'Yes, Spike. Still one hundred percent unable to make with the violence.'  
  
'Deadened and hating it,' Angel quipped.  
  
'Yeah, well, they grabbed Dawn, which is always good for a wiggins,' I said, unable to find any humour there. She's annoying, yeah, and she's a weakness, sure, but it's my duty to protect her. Well, and everyone else; but she's blood.  
  
'Right,' Angel said slowly, tipping his head back and closing his eyes.  
  
'Are you okay?' I asked, suddenly forgetting Dawn with concern for my dozy lover. Um, former.  
  
'What? Oh, yeah,' he said. 'Just tired.' He gave me another fleeting grin, 'I'm moving house.'  
  
'Suburban,' I said.  
  
'An abandoned hotel that was infested with a parasitical demon for over fifty years,' he corrected, very seriously. I shot a look at him from under my lashes to check if he was joking.  
  
'At least you'll have a lot of room,' I said.  
  
'And a lot to do,' he said, sighing, 'Sixty-eight rooms, and not one that doesn't need decorating.'  
  
'You are suburban,' I said in amazement, 'Is that what you did this week? Invested in real estate?'  
  
'No,' he said, 'I had to get the demon out first.'  
  
'Any trouble?' I said.  
  
'No,' he said, offering a bittersweet smile to no-one in particular, 'Just exorcised some ghosts.'  
  
'Okay, I'm confused,' I said, confused. 'Was it a demon, or was it ghosts?'  
  
'Their demon. My ghosts,' he replied, then seemed to consider the matter closed.  
  
That's cryptic. That's annoying.  
  
'Well, it just so happens I may have spent some time doing something similar.'  
  
'Ghosts?' he asked, looking at me.  
  
'Real estate,' I shot back, 'I think Giles is thinking about buying the magic shop.'  
  
'He wants to think carefully, then,' Angel said, 'There seemed to have been a new owner there every time I went in.'  
  
'I'll get Willow to check for curses,' I joked, but I made a mental note to remember it for the real world.  
  
'So he may be back in gainful employ twice over,' I said.  
  
'What?' he said.  
  
'I asked him to be my Watcher again,' I told him, 'Officially.'  
  
'What brought that on?' he asked.  
  
'Dracula,' I said. 'I didn't know how to deal with him, and it scared me that I ...'  
  
I stopped instantly when I felt cool fingers on my throat, softly caressing the spot on my neck where vampire fangs have bitten twice. I knew what Angel was feeling, apart from the rapid pulse and rush of blood; the scar that had become familiar to me over the last year, his own bite mark.  
  
'I said it'd heal,' he remarked softly.  
  
'You did,' I said, remembering the first dream I'd shared with him, or part of him.  
  
There was a sudden chill wind and I shivered.  
  
Angel noticed. 'Cold?'  
  
'Yeah,' I said.  
  
'You're not, you know,' he said, amused, 'This is a dream.'  
  
'My dream,' I said, half-questioning. I didn't like to be reminded that soon I'd wake up, and be two hours away from him again. Being with him, chatting, sharing the days' inanities that no-one else would care about ... it's familiar. It's right.  
  
Riley and I don't talk much.  
  
'Maybe yours,' he said, 'Maybe ours.'  
  
'Well, then,' I said, 'In my dream, you give me your coat when I'm cold.'  
  
He laughed, a rich sound I love but long ago became resigned to hearing infrequently, and sat up, pulling off his duster and draping it around my shoulders. I pulled it around myself, then hung onto his arm when he went to move away again. I interlaced my fingers firmly with his, inching over to cuddle up against his side. His easy embrace gave me far more warmth than the jacket could.  
  
We sat in comfortable silence. There weren't any stars out, but the sky was -  
  
'There could be stars,' he said from nowhere.  
  
'How did you know I was thinking that?' I said, shocked and kind of impressed.  
  
'You were looking at the sky, and ... I know how you like your nights,' he teased.  
  
He does know. He should, when we shared so many of them.  
  
'So how do I get stars, then?' I said.  
  
'Think them there, and they will be,' he said simply.  
  
I gazed up at the dark sky, willing tiny pinpricks of light to appear.  
  
It was a complete anti-climax when none did.  
  
'That worked well,' I said.  
  
'You're pushing too hard,' he said soothingly, 'Just imagine them there, like they always are, remember them...'  
  
His voice was deep and soft and my eyes closed. I rested my head on his shoulder and listened to him. He can have a very hypnotic voice, my Angel; I lost count of the number of times I fell asleep to his smooth tones whispering at my bedside.  
  
'There!' he said, sounding pleased.  
  
I opened my eyes, catching the faint glimmer of stars fading out.  
  
'And I repeat, that worked well,' I said dryly.  
  
'It'll come,' he promised, 'You just don't know what to do yet.'  
  
His words reminded me of something, and I felt a sharp deja-vu. Or maybe premonition.  
  
'Common theme lately,' I mumured.  
  
He didn't answer, but I knew he understood me because his arm tightened reassuringly around my shoulders as I leant into him.  
  
'Angel?' I ventured after a minute.  
  
'Mm,' he replied comfortably.  
  
I straightened up, away from his hold.  
  
'Did you,' I said, stumbling, almost afraid to be answered, 'I mean, when you were here ... when you first came ... did you ever sense anything dark about me? Evil?'  
  
He looked at me, his eyes glinting in the darkness.  
  
'Dracula said, I didn't know about myself,' I explained haltingly, 'And before that ... I dreamt ...'  
  
I dragged his arm back around me and burrowed into his chest. He stroked my hair, relaxing me slowly.  
  
'I've never sensed anything demonic about you, Buffy,' he said, his voice a little muffled, and I knew he was telling the truth. 'You were ... you're my light.'  
  
'There's so much I don't know,' I whispered, peering up at him, 'I need to understand.'  
  
He gazed back down at me, 'Does it really matter what the source of your power is, Buffy? As long as you're using it for good?'  
  
I looked at him, absorbing him, realising that this was why I'd confided in him the thoughts I didn't want to share with Giles, or Willow, or Xander. It was for this wisdom; for an understanding of what it was to be totally confused about who I was that they couldn't match.  
  
Woah. I have a more complex subconscious than I thought.  
  
'It took me a while to figure that out,' Angel told me, his expression serious. 'I still am. I still wonder about ... it all. But I assume,' he gave me a sweet half-smile, 'That as long as I'm doing good,' he shrugged, the smile becoming deprecating, 'I'm doing good.'  
  
'Thank you,' I said sincerely.  
  
'No problem,' he said.  
  
'I still want to know,' I said.  
  
'Then find out,' he told me, getting to his feet in one fluid motion, 'But try not to worry about it.'  
  
I watched him climb easily into the window and jump lightly into the room. His eyes fell on the bed. He hesitated, then turned back to me, and I knew instinctively that what spoke now was little more than Angel's form, though what was in it wasn't threatening.  
  
'Look after Dawn, Buffy, okay?'  
  
'I will,' I said, a little surprised, and a little annoyed. She is my sister.  
  
'Good,' he said, suddenly all Angel again as he leaned out of the window to kiss me softly on the forehead.  
  
I looked at Dawn, and by the time I looked back over at the door, he was gone.  
  
It's strange that I'd dream that; Angel hardly ever used the door.  



	3. We Walk In A Dream

TITLE: We Walk In A Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 3  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: You don't really need me to tell you, do you? No, thought not. Title nicked from a song by Live. Apparently.  
TIMELINE: Post 'The Replacements' and 'First Impressions'.  
SPOILERS: See above. Season 5 spoilers!!! Oh, and To Shanshu In LA.  
SYNOPSIS: You don't really need me to tell you this either, do you? Okay ... Buffy dreams of Angel.  
DISTRIBUTION: Just take it and link me.  
FEEDBACK: Please *do* feed the animal.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
The first couple of nights, I wondered where he was. I'm not completely oblivious; I have noticed that the dreams come soon after the Big Bad of the week goes. And this week Toth was dead and Xander was Xander rather than Xanders, and he didn't come.  
  
I missed him. It. Them. I miss him more generally now, in a way. It's comforting to know how he's doing, what's going on in his life, but sometimes all it does is remind me that *I'm* not going on in his life. And if something happened to him - hurt, kidnapped - I wouldn't necessarily get told. Probably haven't been told more than once.  
  
I'm sure he's not dead, because I think Cordelia might remember to pass that on. And I'd know, anyway. If he were gone. I'm certain I would.  
  
So I was wondering why he hadn't appeared. And I decided if the vampire wouldn't come to the Slayer; well, the Slayer would have to go to the vampire.  
  
*******  
  
I'm not even sure how I did it. Everyone knows that wanting to dream something is the best way to guarantee that you won't; but it worked for me this time.  
  
I found myself in his apartment, the only place I can associate with him in LA, though I do remember him mentioning he'd moved. Active listening; it's the way forward. I shouldn't remember this place well enough to dream of it, recreate it; I was here once and I was in something of a bad mood. But even that first time, when Faith was here, it all seemed familiar, somehow.  
  
Well, it contains the essence of Angel. How could it be anything but?  
  
He was sitting on the couch, his stiff back to me, staring into space.  
  
'Angel?' I said tentatively, sidling up.  
  
He didn't answer. I tried again, reaching out to touch him gingerly on the shoulder.  
  
His speed surprised me as he spun around, knocking my hand away, his face contorted, seconds away from vamp mode.  
  
I shied back, instantly falling into a fighting stance; my body feels its mate around him, but it also senses vampire.  
  
He looked at me blankly, focusing on me, and his arm dropped back down.  
  
'Buffy ...' he said slowly, peering at me half-fearfully.  
  
'Hi!' I said, falsely perky, 'It's okay for me to come here, right? Only I -'  
  
He interrupted me by clambering easily over the back of the couch, reaching for me and pulling me against him tightly. I reached up instinctively, wrapping my arms around his neck. I held him to me with at least as much force as he used to clutch at me, not knowing the source of his ... fear? Worry? I don't know, but I responded to him the way he responded to me a hundred times when we were together; comforting, soothing, without need for words or explanation. Understanding.  
  
'We shouldn't be here,' he said, his voice muffled in my hair. I felt his head raise from its resting place on mine, and he glanced around.  
  
'It's - not right, here. Past.'  
  
I pulled back from him. Okay, so we do need *some* words.  
  
'What?' I said elegantly.  
  
He looked at me and in his eyes I saw confusion.  
  
Then I heard the crackling, smelled the smoke.  
  
'Oh my God!' I freaked, whirling around, grabbing Angel, trying to pull him away. He batted my hands away absently.  
  
'It's okay,' he said.  
  
'It's okay!' I shrieked, 'Angel, we're in the basement of a burning building!'  
  
'In a dream,' he said.  
  
I remembered. 'Oh,' I said, 'Okay, I'm embarrassed.'  
  
He wasn't listening to me. He reached for me again, pulling me against him with one rigid arm around my waist. I followed where his gaze was locked; on the stairs leading up.  
  
Where Wesley lay unconscious.  
  
I would have had a mini-freak, but Angel showed no other reaction than to cling to me almost painfully. We listened to Angel's voice shout frantically for Wesley. We watched while Angel appeared - another Angel - and grabbed Wesley, carrying him upstairs, presumably to safety. My Angel looked on, steadfast and emotionless as his other self came and went, ignoring our presence.  
  
Oh, hey! I think I dreamed myself a headache. As if double-Xander wasn't enough of that theme.  
  
And then other-Angel and Wesley were gone and so were the lingering traces of fire, and we stood on an open street in the midst of a black, smoking ruin. Angel kicked the pathetic remains of a Byzantine axe.  
  
'You can't trust any workmanship these days,' I joked feebly.  
  
I regretted it as soon as our eyes met, and I flinched inwardly at the reproach in his gaze.  
  
'I'm sorry,' I said quietly. 'This happened? It's why you moved?'  
  
'Yeah, it happened,' he answered expressionlessly.  
  
It was clear that wasn't the whole story, and I would have asked him about it, but he fixed his eyes on me and took my hand, saying, almost childlike, 'I don't want to be here.'  
  
I looked at him questioningly. He tightened his grip and said plainly, 'Take us somewhere else.'  
  
I kept looking at him; and I saw in his eyes where to go.  
  
*******  
  
We sat awkwardly in the mansion, no fire going as there always was in the real version. In fact, I'm not sure where the light was coming from; a pale glow with no apparent source. Not all the better to see you with, my dear. It was like some houseproud ghost trying to hide the dust.  
  
'So ... any demons this week?' I offered, trying to kickstart the conversation. Any conversation.  
  
'Yeah,' he said shortly.  
  
I waited hopefully to see if he would elaborate, but it soon became apparent he wasn't about to.  
  
'Well, we had a great week,' I babbled senselessly, desperate to fill the silence, 'Xander got himself split into two by some demon trying to make me normal Buffy and Slayer Buffy -'  
  
That seemed to break through.  
  
'But it didn't work,' he said carefully, running his eyes over me. I felt a low-down tickle which I immediately banished with a stern reminder to Those Parts.  
  
'No,' I said, 'It got Xander, I told you. Except we ended up with cool Xander and bumbling Xander. But the real Xander at least got a promotion and a new apartment out of it, so we helped him move a couple of days ago, not that Anya was a lot of help, or Willow either, or actually Riley, so I wasa doing most of the heavy carrying, and I guess the way forward is removal men, except for the expense factor ...' my inane monologue trailed into oblivion at his detached gaze on my face.  
  
'Is it always about you?' he asked in a voice devoid of anything resembling interest.  
  
I flushed and evaded his eyes. 'I ...'  
  
No. This is wrong. Angel's never minded hearing about my life before. Even in my other dreams.  
  
'Angel ... are you okay?' I ventured.  
  
'Fine,' he said, pretty unconvincingly.  
  
'Aren't I always?' he went on rhetorically, with a tiny tinge of bitterness that shocked but also touched me. Angel is one of the bravest people I know ... he accepts his pretty crappy lot in life quietly and he gets on with his stuff. It's not like him to dwell. Brood, yes, and constantly, but he's never bitter.  
  
'You don't have to be always,' I tried.  
  
He snapped his head up to look at me, 'What's that supposed to mean?'  
  
'Nothing,' I said, surprised and worried. I shifted over to sit closer to him and said quietly, 'Isn't there ... come on, there's gotta be someone around to take care of you.'  
  
I pushed my hair over my shoulder absently. His gaze shifted, focusing for a moment on the blond strands, and then some realisation came over his face and he stared back at me with narrowed eyes, his expression akin to hatred.  
  
I never thought I'd see Angel look at me with hatred.  
  
'You can't leave me anything, can you?' he said softly, dangerously.  
  
'What?' I said, badly confused, 'Angel, I don't know what -'  
  
He was up in one graceful movement, going quickly over to the exit. Before he left, he paused and turned around, pinning me with a dark look.  
  
'You're dead,' he said precisely. 'Stay out of my head.'  
  
And then he was gone. And I was lost. 


	4. Can't Get You Out Of My Thoughts (interl...

TITLE: Can't Get You Out Of My Thoughts  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep interlude  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: All belong to Joss, but he's currently being nasty to Angel/making Buffy nasty, so I'm borrowing them.  
TIMELINE: After 'First Impressions' but also after 'We Walk In A Dream'.  
SPOILERS: 'First Impressions', the other installments of the series. Also 'Lover's Walk', 'Angel', 'The Prodigal' (I think), 'I Will Remember You'.  
SYNOPSIS: Angel thinks of Buffy. Ah! Surprised you!  
DISTRIBUTION: Just ask!  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This follows Only When I Sleep 3, 'We Walk In A Dream', but it also stands alone; you don't really need the series to read it, and you don't need to read it for the series (but you know you want to anyway). I was considering writing it and then a couple of people wrote after 'We Walk In A Dream' and said "so the end ... what was that about?" or similar, so I figured maybe I needed it :).  
FEEDBACK: Yes, please! Tell me if I'm completely misreading the whole Darla-dreams thing and Angel's feelings about it.  
RATING: PG, maybe a little higher.  
  
  
  
'I can't get you out of my thoughts  
Or out of my heart and I know I'm in love with you baby  
Everything I do leads me back to you  
You got to know that you're driving me crazy'  
Can't Get You Out Of My Thoughts, DumDums  
  
  
I haven't had a really great sleep for two hundred and forty-odd years. A good hunter never really opens themselves up like that; leaves themself vulnerable to any idiot with a stake. And I was the best. Sleep is still that weakness for me, but it's easier to indulge in it when I know there's people around me who can keep me safe while I let myself go.  
  
I just don't like to. For a hundred years I was tortured by a thousand terrified faces whenever I closed my eyes, and the dreams were worse. It pretty much put me off. The dreams after I returned from hell my waking mind protectively stopped me from remembering; still does, when I have them, but I always have the shadow, the twisted sheets, the knowledge that that's what I was dreaming of, but never anything of what I actually dreamt. I sometimes wonder if it would be better to know - whether it would help me feel a little more like I've paid my dues if I knew exactly what I experienced there.  
  
Then the other dreams came, less than a month ago; the dreams where I saw Buffy, and felt Buffy, and upon waking instinctively knew had been Buffy, though I don't know how or why it happened. I have a fair idea; sometimes Buffy seems less completely herself than a mix of her and the now-dead female Oracle who sympathised with our sad story.   
  
Whoever it is, it became easier to go to sleep, because there was a chance I'd get the fix I am denied in the real world. I hide it better now, and sometimes even forget for a little while, but ultimately Spike was right to call her my addiction; and righter still in his assertion that we wouldn't, couldn't stop loving each other. The dreams with her have taught me that.  
  
The new dreams, the ones where Darla appear, teach me again what I'd forgotten; that a sire's addiction can be stronger still.  
  
I have dreamt of Darla before; nightmares of us playing together before I regained my soul, of her rejection just after, of my final rejection as I staked her in the back. But these dreams, these images of homeliness and contentment and even passion ... these are new.  
  
Well, not entirely new. The dreams of someone looking after me when I come in exhausted from the hunt, of a caring embrace meant to soothe and reassure, of a hot meeting of smooth flesh; that's been a common theme since I left Buffy in Sunnydale and picked up my mission in LA. But Buffy. Always Buffy. Especially after our lost day, when my unconscious tortured me with images of how our life together could have been.  
  
Though never as much as my conscious assailed me with images of Buffy lying bleeding and broken, her life draining away in my arms as her instinct to protect me, her human lover, killed her. I still believe I did the right thing that morning; I just wish I'd had one more day, one more minute.  
  
The demon rejoices to have Darla placed in the position Buffy usually occupies in my dreams; he abhors my love for her, and loathes my desire, though that he at least understands. To have Darla, his mate, in the role of my lover, is in a way his revenge; he taunts me with the stark images, vividly recollected from the day or night's dream. He taunts me further, with a glee I used to reserve for the kill, with the memory of my reponse to those images.  
  
And that is what baffles and reviles me the most. How I can wake with a happy smile on my face; how I nearly strangled Wesley for making her leave. I try to tell myself it's a physical response after a hundred years of almost unbroken celibacy, a simple reaction to the proximity of a female my body knows intimately.  
  
That's Buffy too.  
  
But it is more than that; I respond to Darla, to what Darla does, emotionally. When I wake up I wonder where she is for a split-second, why she's not lying next to me. Then I hate myself for it.  
  
For all of it; for betraying Buffy, for wanting a woman, a demon, I know to be dangerous, for enjoying her. Especially for enjoying her; for enjoying her to the point that I spend more time in slumber than in reality. I know that my game is off; I'm distracted, I fight with one eye on the demon and the other on the clock, wondering when I can get back to bed. I disgust myself, but I can't stop myself either.  
  
And this is my redemption? I'm behaving how I did when I ran with Darla, and later Spike and Dru, revelling in the blood and destruction we brought so easily. As if I'd never killed her, as if I still knew what it is she wants. With one difference; I know different.  
  
I am different. I don't want Darla in the unthinking, animalistic way I did for so long, and I don't want these dreams, this twisting of memories. I want what she offers in the dreams. I want the loving presence, the comfortable relationship, the slow worshipful lovemaking that only happens when you know your partner's body better than your own, the little things that have no importance until you have them with someone you love beside you. Or until you don't have them at all.  
  
If I can't have those things really, I'll settle for them in my dreams. But not with Darla.  
  
I thought I was safe last night; I sat in my old apartment and assumed she was coming. But it was Buffy who welcomed me into her calm arms, gave me a chance to hold her. I felt better just from her presence; she filled the room. She always does - it's thrilling, as a vampire, to be in the presence of a Slayer but know her not to be a threat, feel her strength without risk. I felt her essence surround me, and I thought that maybe I would be okay, maybe I could get through this, throw Darla's chains off.  
  
Until she revealed herself with an inadvertent reference to her other visits. My blonde lover. But not the right one.  
  
I didn't think she would attack using Buffy's form; like the truly addicted, I thought that was sacred. Darla is using any way she can to get to me.  
  
And I don't know how to fight her.  
  
  
END  
  
  
NOTE: Considerable D/A undertones in this one; I apologize to rabid haters of them together, but considering that this series is primarily dreamfic and the contents of Angel's dreams in the ep, I couldn't *not* explore it. I'm actually ambivalent about the pairing (which I'm more than happy to discuss if anyone wants to); being the spoiler slut that I am, I don't see it having too many repercussions on what's currently passing for B/A. However, it will have big repercussions on this series; sorry, I have to work with what Joss gives me and I think it'll be getting worse before it gets better. But I promise that then I'll go back to the fluff. 


	5. Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This

TITLE: Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 4  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Buffy and Angel belong to Joss; the title comes from a song by the Eurythmics. Who am I to disagree?  
TIMELINE: After 'Out Of My Mind' and 'Untouched'.  
SPOILERS: 'Out Of My Mind' and 'Untouched'.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel meet again in their dreams.  
DISTRIBUTION: Want, ask, have.  
FEEDBACK: It's not that I won't beg ... it's more that you really don't want to see it.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
I didn't go looking for him, and I don't think he tried to find me.  
  
But something brought us together.  
  
********  
  
'Nice place,' I observed dryly. 'Your choice?'  
  
Angel lay prostrate on a large bed, staring at the flaming sunset above and around him. I went over (it was kind of like floating. Can't say I'm eager to repeat the walking-on-nothing feeling) and stood over him, arms crossed.  
  
Trying not to be affected by his state of shirtlessness. He's really gained more muscle definition around the ... no! I don't care.  
  
'I don't know,' he said disinterestedly. His eyes flicked over me, raking me over from head to toe, lingering like a loving caress. I fidgeted, discomforted, and his gaze moved back up onto the red streaks. He gave the sky a tiny smile. 'Probably you. Where would I get the imagery?'  
  
'I think this is an LA sunset,' I said.  
  
'I still can't go out in them,' he pointed out.  
  
'Whatever,' I said, determined to match him in detachment.  
  
'Feel free to sit down,' he said.  
  
'Fine,' I said stiffly, 'I will. Move over.'  
  
He heaved a sigh he didn't need and shifted over.  
  
I sat heavily on the bed, then, suddenly tired, I swung my feet up and lay back.  
  
The bed promptly dipped down the centre, flinging me and Angel into a messy tangle in the middle.  
  
'Sorry,' he said.  
  
'Sorry,' I said.  
  
'Aren't you going to move?' I said a minute later.  
  
'Aren't you?' he countered. Very childishly, I thought.  
  
'Yeah,' I said. Though I was enjoying having his body pressed against mine again, after so ... Oh, God. Shoot me now.  
  
'Go on then,' he said.  
  
I exerted myself to move and nearly rolled off the bed. Angel threw a quick hand out to steady me, gripping my hand with reassuring strength and capability, pulling me back up.  
  
'Over-compensation,' he explained solemnly.  
  
'Yeah,' I agreed awkwardly, resuming my place a careful distance from him.  
  
We lay in silence. Again.  
  
'What's the point of this?' I burst out eventually, unable to find the fascination Angel did in the sunset. Well, I guess I can see them any day, while he can't, but it's polite for a guy to make a girl feel more interesting than the scenery.  
  
'Of what?' he said.  
  
'This!' I yelled. 'We have these dreams and you don't talk to me and nothing happens and it's not like they really count as rest out there!' I gesticulated wildly, trying to indicate the real world. 'Why bother?'  
  
He turned his head and fixed his gaze on me. Again, I had the sense that I was talking to two beings; Angel and something ... else. Something deeper.  
  
'This is real,' he stated calmly. 'What is done cannot be undone; what is bound once is bound always.'  
  
'That's cryptic,' I sniped. 'And it's a cryptic non-answer.'  
  
'All I've got,' he said.  
  
I made a note to try and remember that to spout back to Giles; it sounded vaguely like prophecy language. Though that would entail explaining how I came across this little bit of wisdom, and then I'd have to tell him about the dreams, and then - then I don't know.  
  
'You can just go, Buffy,' he said. 'Think out of it and they won't drag you back.'  
  
'Ever?' I asked quietly.  
  
'Not ever,' he said. 'But not now.'  
  
I do know that however small, however unreal these glimpses of him are - I don't want to lose them.  
  
'No,' I said.  
  
He put out a tentative hand to me and I took it. We clasped our hands in the middle of the bed and lay, together.  
  
'So, how's your life?' he ventured when I was near sleep (except for that, um, I was already in sleep), soothed by his presence and cool palm against my warm one. I've always liked that temperature difference. Even now, I sometimes wake and wonder why the arms cradling me aren't marble-hard and cool.  
  
'Sucky,' I said matter-of-factly. 'You?'  
  
'All right,' he said.  
  
'Wanna talk about it?'  
  
I laughed bitterly. 'Yep. But you don't wanna hear about it.'  
  
'Try me,' he coaxed.  
  
'It's about Riley,' I said unemotionally.  
  
'Oh,' he said. 'Maybe I don't want to hear about it.'  
  
'He was sick.'  
  
'Is this some sort of you feeding him chicken soup thing?' he asked hesitantly, 'Because that's cute and all, but I don't need to know, Buffy.'  
  
'More of a him nearly dying thing,' I told him.  
  
He was quiet for a minute. 'Oh. I'm sorry.'  
  
'I think you've already proved you're not too bothered about his health, Angel,' I half-teased.  
  
'I'm bothered about you,' he said. 'It's ... not easy to see someone you love sick. I know that.'  
  
'Love,' I murmured.  
  
Angel didn't say anything.  
  
'He didn't want to get treatment,' I said slowly,' Because he thought I wouldn't want him if he was normal.'  
  
'Then he's an idiot,' Angel said fervently. He rolled up onto his elbow to look fully down at me. He reached out his free hand, and it hovered while he seemed to consider; then it settled gently on my abdomen and his fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt so he could caress my belly soothingly. Riley does that; but it seemed right when Angel did it. I relaxed, silently telling him it was okay.  
  
'All you've ever wanted was to be normal,' Angel went on. He smiled ruefully. 'That's why I left.'  
  
'Maybe not all I ever wanted,' I said, staring up into his dark eyes. His hand stilled as he gazed back at me and there was a moment - okay, a pretty long moment - when all I wanted was for him to kiss me.  
  
So of course that was when he flopped back over onto his back. I might've smacked him, only he reached to reclaim my hand immediately, this time beginning an erratic rhythm of strokes with his thumb on my palm.  
  
Do you know how difficult it is to concentrate when your lover starts doing that? Um, ex.  
  
I made a womanful effort. 'What about you?'  
  
'What about me?' he said, his fingers starting to wander up my arm.  
  
'Well, you usually have an eventful week ...' I said. My elbows are very ticklish.  
  
He gave a low laugh, 'I did.'  
  
I made a conscious effort to control my breathing. Damn my traitorous body.  
  
'I met a kinetic and got impaled on an iron bar for my troubles,' he said.  
  
I shot up, 'What? Where? Are you okay?' I asked, scanning his body quickly.  
  
Angel indicated his shoulder. The skin there was smooth and unblemished. 'Oh,' I said, lying back, 'Hang on - is it like that in the real world?'  
  
'Yeah,' he said reassuringly, 'Still have the super healing.'  
  
'Yeah,' I said, comforted. He's hard to kill. Like me.  
  
'As long as you're okay,' I said.  
  
'Yeah,' he said distantly. 'I ... I'm okay.'  
  
I wasn't quite surprised when he said, 'No, I'm not. I've been ... Buffy, I've been having ...'  
  
We were interrupted by a distant knocking. I frowned, trying to place it, resisting the impulse to check for a bogeyman or other monster under the bed. Well, you try having this duty.  
  
I looked at Angel, waiting for him to go on; he was listening intently. 'Gotta get out of bed ...' he muttered absently. Then he gave me a quick, regretful smile and disengaged his hand from mine.  
  
'I have to go,' he said softly.   
  
'Aren't you going to finish?' I asked, causing him to have an expression; our eyes locked again, and I opened my mouth to ask him about the strange confusion in his gaze.  
  
'No,' he said finally. He gave me a brittle smile, and added, 'I'm sure it'll sort out.'  
  
'You know,' I said, leaning up for a moment to look at him intently, 'I'm just on the other end of the phone. I mean, really ... if you want to talk ... you can call.'  
  
'Thanks,' he said, grinning crookedly. He hesitated for a moment, then added quietly, 'You know I won't.'  
  
'Yeah,' I said resignedly, giving him a bittersweet smile. 'Bye.'  
  
He bent over me and my eyes closed instinctively as his lips found mine. We kissed tenderly for a long minute, holding the contact. I relished the familiar sensation, memorising the coolness of his mouth against mine, of one of his big hands brushing my hair back, and him leaning strong and graceful above me.  
  
When I reluctantly opened my eyes he was gone; but I stayed a little while longer. I kind of miss those flashy LA sunsets. 


	6. Tangled In My Dreams

TITLE: Tangled In My Dreams  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 5  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: I'm just borrowing them, and then I'm going to put them back in Joss' hands for next time, but they'll be smiling.  
TIMELINE: After 'No Place Like Home' and 'Dear Boy'.  
SPOILERS: Yes. See above.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel dream again, in a vaguely angsty way.  
DISTRIBUTION: If you have any others, take; if you want, ask.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The title is from another Corrs song, 'Radio'; this is the line. "But you are in my head, swimming forever in my head, tangled in my dreams, swimming forever".  
FEEDBACK: Want me to make it to the end of the season? Then tell me you're reading!  
RATING: PG-ish.  
DEDICATION: Everyone who liked the kissage in last week's installment ...  
  
  
  
I sat patiently, sure that this week, when I needed him so much, he wouldn't let me down. And he didn't; he appeared right on cue, crossing the dance floor of the silent Bronze to sprawl next to me on the couch where I was curled up. I immediately reached for his hand, lacing my fingers through his. He gripped me reassuringly, his eyes checking me over with concern.  
  
'You've been doing magick,' he said.  
  
'Trance,' I said, concentrating on our intertwined fingers.  
  
'You being careful?' he asked, 'That's a dangerous spell for someone untrained.'  
  
'I'm the Slayer, 'I stated simply.  
  
'You're not untouchable,' he remonstrated gently.  
  
'Oh, I know,' I said bitterly. 'But the spell was okay ... I'm getting better.'  
  
'But you didn't find out what you wanted to know,' he said.  
  
'No,' I said. 'My mom ...' I broke off, then bit my lip and carried on, instinctively knowing he would know what I was talking about, 'I don't know how to fight it if it's not supernatural.'  
  
I looked at him fearfully, tears beginning to prick at my eyes. He raised our hands to his lips and kissed my hand gently, calming me a little.  
  
'Maybe this is her fight,' he said.  
  
'Maybe,' I said, looking down.  
  
His other hand came to my chin, tilting my head up so I blinked, surprised, into his eyes.  
  
'It's not fair,' I said, not whining, just stating fact. A daughter who is a Slayer, a daughter who isn't her daughter. Now something else. That I can't do anything about.  
  
'Is anything?' he said.  
  
We were silent for a few moments, his thumb rubbing absently over the back of my hand.  
  
'She's not my sister,' I said quietly.  
  
'No,' he confirmed.  
  
'I have all these memories ... I *know* her. I remember pinching her when she was a baby, and helping her walk when she was a toddler, and being happy when she got my name right the first time, and a thousand other things that didn't happen,' I burst out.  
  
'They happened for her,' he said softly, placing his other hand on top of our joined ones, capturing my hand in a cool hold.  
  
'And everyone else,' I said.  
  
'And you,' he pointed out, 'You just know it's not real.'  
  
'But how can it not be real?' I asked him desperately, 'She's here. She's always been here.'  
  
'Then go with that,' he said.  
  
'I don't know if I can,' I confided sadly.  
  
'You can,' he told me, kneeling up and over me on the large couch. He freed one of his hands to move it over my heart, pressing gently as I looked into his eyes, 'There's so much room in here, Buffy. You've already taken her in. She needs you to be her big sister.'  
  
'I know,' I said. 'I'll try. But nobody else knows ... I can't ... you're the only one I can tell.' My eyes filled with tears and he pulled me into his arms, holding me comfortingly. I reached trembling arms around his neck, grabbing him close and burying my head into his shoulder.  
  
'A man died in my arms today, Angel,' I said into his skin.  
  
'I know,' he whispered, rubbing my back smoothly.  
  
I pulled back a little, gazing into his eyes, 'I couldn't stop it,' I told him, 'I couldn't stop that woman.'  
  
He stared back into me, his eyes deep and sure, 'You will, Buffy.'  
  
'What if I can't?' I said, 'They sent Dawn to me because they thought I could protect her. What if I can't? What if more die because of her, and me?'  
  
'You can't save everyone,' he said, 'I know it's hard.'  
  
'Gotta keep trying anyway,' I responded emotionlessly. 'Sometimes I wonder what the point is.'  
  
'The trying is the point,' he said, 'And then sometimes, most times, you save them ... and that's the reward.'  
  
'Yeah,' I said. 'You know I'm coming up to five years soon.'  
  
'The longest a Slayer's lasted for over two centuries,' he said. I don't know if that was supposed to cheer me up.  
  
'You're doing so well, Buffy,' he was continuing.  
  
'I've had help,' I reminded him, smiling at him to see him grin back.  
  
'Yeah,' he agreed, 'But you're the inspiration.'  
  
'I've wanted to leave it, you know,' I confided.  
  
'Yeah, I know,' he said.  
  
'No, I mean all of it,' I said, watching him carefully, 'Not just the Slayer thing. Everything. I think sometimes it'd be easy to let go, in a fight, or something ... I want peace, Angel.'  
  
He listened intently. That's what's so great about Angel; I know he's really hearing what I'm saying. Well, one of the great things. He understands.  
  
'I've been there,' he said seriously. 'The important thing is that you haven't let go. You've dealt with so much, Buffy. I'm so proud of you.'  
  
'Is it easier to be evil?' I asked him straight. I saw the flash in his eyes, felt him flinch, and regretted it; but I knew he understood why I asked, and I knew he'd tell me the truth.  
  
He laughed softly. 'So much easier ... you wouldn't believe.'  
  
'Do you ... miss it?' I asked hesitantly.  
  
'I miss the freedom,' he admitted slowly, 'I miss never having to think about what's right. It's simple. It's just the chase and the kill.'  
  
His eyes looked straight through me as he spoke, and then he switched his focus back onto my face. 'It's tempting sometimes ... it gets hard realising no-one will ever know.' I nodded agreement; it's easy to feel unappreciated in this profession.   
  
'But I couldn't go back to it now, like this ... it's even harder to choose wrong knowing that's what you're doing,' he finished.  
  
I moved alongside him and cuddled up into his side. He put an arm around my shoulders and held me tightly.  
  
'So, we've dissected my pain,' I said. 'Wanna talk about you?'  
  
He didn't answer for a moment. Then he said matter-of-factly, 'Darla's back.'  
  
'What!' I shot up, breaking his hold. 'That's not ... you dusted her!'  
  
'I know,' he said, 'But there's this law firm, and ... and I don't want to bore you with the details, but they resurrected her.'  
  
'Oh, that is so not allowed,' I said, firing up. 'Want me to come stake her?'  
  
'She's human,' he said.  
  
'So no killing,' I said, trying to process.  
  
'Not now,' he said, 'But I will. If she hurts anyone else. I'll kill her without regret.' His eyes were hard in his set face; I've never seen that expression on him before, and I shivered. He seemed to come back to himself, and his gaze filled with warmth again as he looked at me.  
  
'Why did they bring her back?' I said, settling beside him again.  
  
'To bring me back to the fold,' he said. 'What else?'  
  
'But what you were saying before,' I said uncertainly, 'You're going to hold on, right?' What I meant was, "you're going to stay with me". Even if he's not, in the strictest sense, with me.  
  
He pressed a kiss to my temple. 'Of course.'  
  
'Going to avoid her ...' I said pointedly.  
  
He heaved a surprisingly heavy sigh for someone who doesn't need to breathe, 'You know I can't.'  
  
'Why?' I said.  
  
'She's human ... she has a soul,' he said, 'That's what I do now. I save souls, remember? And as long as there's a chance for her, I can't just leave it.'  
  
'It's dangerous,' I said, trying to keep a tremor out of my voice.  
  
'It always is.'  
  
'Not like this,' I said vehemently, 'She knows you, Angel. She knows your strengths, your weaknesses, how to get to you -'  
  
'And I know hers,' he overrode me.  
  
'She could be different now,' I insisted.  
  
'And I *am* different now,' he said, 'I'm not going to give.'  
  
'You might ...' I stopped, unsure of what I was going to say.  
  
'You know my soul's not in much danger from her,' he said, and without looking up I could feel his eyes on my face.  
  
'Isn't it?' I said, looking up. 'You were with her for a hell of a long time, longer than you were -' I stopped again.  
  
'Longer than I was with you?' he finished softly, sliding towards me. Embarrassed, I nodded.  
  
'But you meant so much more,' he said, his voice almost hypnotic as I played with the hem of my shirt, 'Don't you know that, Buffy? It doesn't compare. The demon wanted her ... I love you.'  
  
Love you. Present tense. I looked up, to see him very close, close enough so I could breathe in his familiar scent, let it wash over me. I could see that my nearness had an effect on him, and my eyes slid closed involuntarily as I felt his cool skin close to mine.  
  
'Two hundred and forty-seven years,' he murmured, 'And *this* is what I remember best.'  
  
I felt his kiss a moment before it fell sweetly on my lips, and I responded instantly, turning and leaning my body more urgently into his, my arms going around him, sliding around his back even as his came around me. He nibbled gently across my lips, playfully, coaxing me to kiss him back, which I did eagerly. Our tongues met, and I moaned lightly, delighting in the feel of him after so long, banishing the thought that in only hours I would be waking up in another man's arms.  
  
He knew, somehow. 'Stay with me, here,' he whispered, tangling a hand in my hair so he could better access my neck, which he began to deliberately kiss his way down. I held him to me, slipping a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck. Once upon a time I would have carried on upwards to run my fingers through his hair, but ...   
  
Well, he's started using more gel, and I didn't want to get them stuck.  
  
I pulled him back up to face me and our mouths met again fiercely. We kissed for long moments until he pulled away with a final lick and peck.  
  
'Yeah,' I panted, 'I remember that pretty well too.'  
  
'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that,' he said.  
  
'It's okay,' I said, feeling slightly dizzy.  
  
'No, it's not,' he said, and I could feel the familiar guilty edge come into his voice, 'You're with someone and I should respect that.'  
  
'So should I,' I said. Our gazes locked, and I thought he was going to capitulate, but he looked away from me.  
  
He stood in one fluid motion. 'Bye, Buffy.'  
  
'Hey, Angel,' I called after him, leaning up over the back of the sofa.  
  
He turned. 'Yeah?'  
  
'If we kill you and bring you back, will you be human?' I said jokingly.  
  
Even from a distance, I felt him stiffen and panicked, wondering had I gone too far.  
  
Then he was in front of, so fast I hardly saw him move. He held the back of my head and crushed my mouth to his again, barely giving me a chance to respond before pulling back and whispering harshly into my ear, 'Give me some time.'  
  
And then he was gone, at least giving me something more to occupy my mind than Dawn. It is kind of disappointing though; he'd been doing so well at leaving out the cryptic.  
  
  
  
  
Well, I hope that was enough to tide you over, because obviously there won't be an installment next week; blame Joss, he didn't want to do a Halloween episode. 


	7. Let Me Be Your Dream

TITLE: Let Me Be Your Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 6  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Everyone inside belongs to someone who is not me. Line is from one of 'Shy''s songs in 'Wild At Heart'; my brand spanking new Watcher's Guide 2 reveals it to be 'Dip' by 'THC' (The Hard Core).  
TIMELINE: After 'Family' and 'Guise Will Be Guise'.  
SPOILERS: 'Amends', 'Doppelgangerland', 'The Prodigal', vague 'The Yoko Factor', 'Family' and 'Guise Will Be Guise'.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel meet, but in a dreamworld.  
DISTRIBUTION: If you have the others, take; if you want any, ask. I haven't said no yet.  
FEEDBACK: Please, please, please! I have exams. I need comfort.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
I think maybe the Powers That Be aren't the most imaginative of all-powerful beings; tonight's mystery location was a repeat, the Old Reliable roof outside my window in my mother's house. Guaranteed not to cause slippages to whatever Slayers sneaking out or vampires sneaking in might chance to use it.  
  
He wasn't there by the time I was, but I knew he would come. I could feel it. Or maybe it was just him I could feel.  
  
Anyway, I waited, trying to work the appearing stars trick he tried to teach me last time we were here. I didn't hear him come in, so I wasn't surprised when his big body appeared at the window. He saw me, and returned my fleeting welcome grin, then came swiftly through the window to drop gracefully at my side.  
  
'You've moved back home,' Angel said.  
  
'Hello to you too,' I teased. He offered me another quick flash of dazzling white teeth, leaning back, propped up on his forearms. I followed his lead, reclining next to him.  
  
'Got a new duty,' I reminded him, answering his comment, 'Dawn's here. And my mom is here, and she -' I stumbled and stopped. I really don't want to think about that, and telling Angel, who isn't here witnessing it, makes whatever's wrong with her real, somehow. And I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with her; something I can't do anything about.  
  
'Hey ...' he said softly, turning to face me, and I just looked at him for a few moments, letting myself absorb the strength and love in his gaze. He always looks his best at night; no surprise, really, given what he is, it's his natural habitat, but there was a time when it wasn't, and yet it must have still suited him. His hair and eyes look darker against the marble-perfect paleness of his skin, and then sometimes the moon throws his face into stark relief, and he looks like the angel of his namesake.  
  
Not that I have anything to compare with Angel at night. Not even Angel in strong artificial light, really. He tends to avoid bright places.  
  
'You've never told me anything about when your family. When you were human,' I said suddenly. Or is it that I've never asked?  
  
He looked down and then up again, at the view of Revello Drive. 'I killed them,' he said matter-of-factly. 'What else is there?' His eyes were bleak, but his voice was toneless. With a sudden, elegant movememnt, he pulled himself up to a sitting position, pulling his legs up and resting his arms on them. A very 'guy' way to sit. I don't think I've seen him do it before, but he does it well.  
  
I stayed where I was, studying his broad back. I was hungry, for reasons I don't know and in a way I can't describe, to know about his past; about him pre-vamp. When he was human, like me. Like the way I'm starting to suspect I'm not.  
  
'You tell me what else there is,' I said, careful to keep my voice neutral.  
  
He was silent, and for a minute I thought he would ignore me. Then he spoke in an even, controlled voice.  
  
'I had a sister. Younger sister. When I first came back, after,' he paused, and I wondered if he'd go on. He did, 'After they'd buried me, she thought I was an angel come back to them. Her angel.'  
  
He lapsed into silence and a new thought came to me, that I'd never really considered before.  
  
'What's your birth name?' I would have said real name, but ... Angel is his real name, at least to me, and probably to him by now. It goes with him - the fallen angel, the avenging angel. With, naturally, the angelic face.  
  
'Liam,' he said, still staring into the blackness. Liam. It's a nice name. But, like I said, he's Angel.  
  
'Actually,' he said, twisting to look at me, and I didn't see the pain I expected to, 'Is Buffy your real name? As in, on your birth certificate?'  
  
'Yes,' I said dangerously. 'Why?'  
  
He went back to looking out, 'I just wondered.'  
  
'There's nothing wrong with my name,' I insisted sharply.  
  
'You've made it yours,' he said sincerely, but I know him well enough to pick up on the laugh in his voice.  
  
'I recommend you stop now,' I warned dryly.  
  
He leaned back again and I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, sensing he'd said all he was going to on the past issue. Maybe another time.  
  
Then I remembered what he'd told me last time we'd met in the dreamspace.  
  
'What's happening with the Darla thing?' I said cautiously, hoping unrealistically for something like 'she's left town for good'.  
  
He visibly stiffened, then heaved a sigh. 'Not much. I'm still trying ... I tried to get to her a couple of days ago.'  
  
'And?' I prompted gently.  
  
'Didn't work,' he said shortly.  
  
I left it, a little stung.  
  
'You think I'm wrong, trying to save her, don't you?' he said a moment later.  
  
'It's not my judgement to make,' I said, remembering Faith. 'I think I understand why you're trying.'  
  
'Cordy and Wes think I'm going crazy,' he said quietly. Our eyes met, and his were soft and deep, almost vulnerable. He's got the strength of his convictions, my Angel, always has, but he doesn't let people in easily and if those he trusts second-guess him, it's more likely to make him doubt himself. I know, I've done it.  
  
'Do you think you're going crazy?' I said, thinking that the psych class came in useful after all.  
  
'No,' he said flatly, 'But I wouldn't count it out as an option.'  
  
That was weird. Angel's not much of a pessimist, which I know clashes with his black-clad brood boy persona, but this kind of despondent cynicism is a new direction for him. As far as I've seen, anyway, and I realise lately that's not far. But I do know him, I think always will, no matter what I may have told him, and this isn't like him.  
  
It was like he heard my thoughts. He said, 'I didn't mean that the way it came out. I'm,' he gestured uselessly, 'I mean, I'm okay. I just ...' he couldn't find the words and fell into a frustrated silence.  
  
'Maybe you should consider psychiatric help,' I said flippantly.  
  
He laughed, 'Funny you should say that.'  
  
'You're seeing a psychiatrist?' I asked curiously, wondering if he'd found a vampire psychiatrist.  
  
'No, no,' he said, apparently enjoying the look on my face. Though thinking about it, I don't know why it was there. He's got a schizophrenia the greats never dreamed of that won't respond to drugs, he lives with the guilt of a thousand kills, he's had to adjust through several time periods, he spent untold eons in hell, and it's all led to suicidal feelings at least once in the last two years. Sure, he's strong, but even the strongest are breakable.  
  
'Close thing, though,' he was going on, 'A swami. Good for metaphysical stuff. Well, actually I saw a fake swami, so his qualifications are doubtful,' his expression turned thoughtful, 'But he made some good points.' His gaze fell on me and he ran his eyes down my body. I squirmed as if it was a physical caress.  
  
'Oh,' I said, slightly bewildered, 'Care to share?'  
  
'Maybe when I've processed,' he promised, 'So, how are you?'  
  
'Oh, fine,' I said idly. 'We rescued Willow's girlfriend from her crazed family. Seems like she has about as good a time with birthdays as I do. Or maybe it was just this one.'  
  
'Hang on,' Angel interrupted, 'Willow's girlfriend?'  
  
'What? Oh, yeah. She's a lesbian,' I informed him. Strange to think it's something he doesn't know.  
  
'Well, I had some suspicions,' he said.  
  
Or maybe he does.  
  
'What? Why?' I said inelegantly.  
  
'Remember her vampire double, couple of years back?' I nodded assent. 'Vampires really aren't too different from the person they were,' he said.  
  
'You are,' I said.  
  
He looked at me, 'How do you know?'  
  
That caught me, 'Well, I ... I,' I stammered, 'Yor soul is a hell of a lot different from the demon, Angel. And ... and your soul is the original, right?'  
  
He was still looking at me probingly, 'Yeah, it is. But the demon ...' he looked away, but I grabbed his chin and forced him to look back at me.  
  
'The demon in me didn't teach the kind of darkness I had. Have,' he said simply, looking me straight in the eye, his own gaze clear and honest. 'It just refined it. Let it out. I'm capable of just the same now as Angelus ever was at his worst.'  
  
I let go of him and he looked away.  
  
'It's not the demon in me that needs killing.' I echoed his words from - God, nearly two years ago.  
  
'It's the man,' he finished, 'Yeah, Buffy.'  
  
It felt like something was pulling me in two. There was a voice, a voice I heard in my dreams a few months back, telling me so he was only a vampire after all; a demon, when all's said and done. Evil.  
  
Needing to die at my hand clutching my stake.  
  
And then there was another voice, my usual head voice. Saying, quite simply, no.  
  
'You know,' I said slowly, and I felt the tension rise in his body, 'In one of these dreams, you told me the source of my power didn't matter as long as I was using it for good.'  
  
He exhaled deeply, 'Buffy ...'  
  
'Why doesn't it count for you?' I said, swinging around to him.  
  
I could see him groping past the space where other people's self-esteem lives to find an actual explanation. 'Because I *was* evil,' he said finally.  
  
'And now you're fighting the evil not only in yourself but outside as well?' I demanded. 'You're like, a bad guy who does good things. Still puts you in the hero category in my book.'  
  
'A vampire in the Slayer's good books?' he said with a bitter laugh. 'What's wrong with this picture?'  
  
I was about to answer when he turned full-on to me, in full vamp face. Golden eyes glared at me; sharp fangs glinted.  
  
I grabbed him and kissed him hard.  
  
I felt him pulling back and held on tight, pulling him up to me; after a moment he relaxed into it and kissed me back, wrapping an arm close around my back. I felt his features start to become regular under my fingertips and purposely ran my tongue over one fang, drawing the slightest bit of blood.  
  
He tasted it, and then he did pull away, fiercely, reverting to his human face and staring at me in shock.  
  
'The only thing wrong with the picture is you're not in it,' I said quietly.  
  
He didn't reply, only got up and backed away slowly, eyes locked to mine. I crawled to the edge of the roof and watched him climb smoothly down, jumping the last couple of metres. He jogged to the sidewalk, hesitated, turned back.  
  
And sent me one final, gorgeous smile before he moved swiftly away that left me really reluctant to leave its ghost in the dream behind. 


	8. Once Upon A Dream

TITLE: Once Upon A Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 7  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Buffy and Angel belong to Joss. The title is that of a Billy Fury song, and is also a song from Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'.  
TIMELINE: After 'Fool For Love' and 'Darla'.  
SPOILERS: 'Fool For Love', 'Darla'.  
SYNOPSIS: For any new readers ... Buffy dreams about Angel.  
DISTRIBUTION: Just send me a link.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I've never seen the hotel Angel lives in, or the layout of his bedroom, so please allow me some artistic license with it. And, look - 'Only When I Sleep' gets an actual technical basis!  
FEEDBACK: Empty inbox bad, feedback pretty (doesn't quite scan, does it?).   
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
My name is Buffy and I am a lucid dreamer. Seems like I'm a textbook case; the dreamer knows they're dreaming but doesn't wake up, dead relatives sometimes drop in and tell you stuff you *don't* already know (and okay, Angel's not a relative, but he is dead, and if there's something I've learned lately, it's that family is relative. I mean ... you know what I mean) and the dreamer may travel to strange lands and other dimensions.  
  
Witness me having knowledge. Gleaned from Willow, in a very awkward, stilted questioning session. She went on for a while, but the part I heard was that lucid dreaming is a powerful tool in taking charge of your destiny; well, I'm not sure I've ever been in charge of my destiny, but I'm trying. I kind of wanted to tell her about the dreams, but I also want to keep it to myself, keep him to myself. The gang weren't keen on him in physical form - I'm not sure they'd love the news that he's wandering freely into my subconscious.   
  
That is, if he is. All the technical talk made me wonder if it is actually Angel I see. If any of it is Angel.  
  
Then I see him, and I know.  
  
* * * * *  
  
So, armed with this new knowledge, I made a real effort to try and control where and when, aiming for a nice sandy beach with palm trees and glittery water and soft moonlight.  
  
Suffice to say it didn't work, because I ended up stumbling into some big place I didn't recognise at all, and the curtains were closed but I could see the muted light shining through them.  
  
I figured that at least meant I'd gotten to Angel, so I could probably claim success, or at least partial success.  
  
He was sitting in a large, fairly bare room. The curtains were open here, which seemed odd, but then he's never liked being cooped up all day; that's why he had an apartment with tunnel access and a mansion without a lot of sunspots. He wasn't actually sitting in direct sunlight, but he was looking out, and he didn't turn to acknowledge me, or even seem to hear me, and maybe I don't make a lot of noise, but I made enough for a vampire to hear me.  
  
'Do you like a view?' he asked, his voice loud in the eerie quiet of the room.  
  
So he heard me.  
  
'I guess,' I said warily.  
  
'So does she,' he said, still without turning around.  
  
I was struck with an odd sense, and turned around slowly. I saw a shadow on the bed, a figure lapsing in and out of view, like a ghost. It's been a while, but I recognised her.  
  
I felt Angel rise and come to stand close, to the side and just behind me.  
  
'I'm obsessed,' he said stoically.  
  
'With Darla?' I asked in an equally emotionless tone, fighting to keep from betraying myself with a tremor.  
  
'Yeah,' he said, then he brushed past me and went to sit on the bed. He stared at where her shade had been, and then dropped his head into his hands.  
  
It always seems like such a dramatic gesture, when you read about people doing that in novels, when you see it on TV. You watch, or you read, and you think 'come on. Who does that?' but when Angel did it, it was natural, it looked like he just couldn't hold his head up anymore. It was heartrending, and it suddenly didn't matter that this was the man I love confessing his obsession with another woman, it was just the man I love in pain.  
  
Doesn't mean that I won't rip her head off if I see her again, it just means it might be for him, rather than for me.  
  
I walked over to the bed and kneeled down beside him. I hesitated a moment, then reached an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close to me. He resisted, then I felt the urge to pull away dissipate and he wrapped his arms around my waist and buried his head in the crook of my neck.  
  
'It's me,' he mumbled into my shoulder. I stroked his hair and let him talk, though it seemed to be mainly rambling, 'the pain, the loneliness, I remember it, she doesn't even appreciate, she just pulls away...'  
  
He quieted, murmuring into my skin, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. I only realised he'd started to intersperse his words with tiny, gentle nips to my skin when a delicious tingling started around my neck and spread through my body.  
  
I guess he sensed the change in me, because he tightened one arm while the other travelled up my back with smooth sweeps of his fingertips, ending in my hair. He cupped my head for a moment, then softly urged my head back with his grip on my hair, allowing him better access to my neck. He started to kiss a slow, deliberate trail up my bared throat, pressing against me. I moaned a little ... Riley just doesn't have this oral fixation.  
  
The thought of Riley reminded me where I was and, much as I was enjoying Angel's attentions, I figured he needed to talk this out more than I needed him.  
  
When his lips reached mine, I let myself savour one quick, sweet kiss, before pulling back. He tried to stop me, but I looked at him, letting my calmness show in my eyes, and he followed me down docilely into the bed as I lay back. I pulled his head to my chest, and I don't know how long we lay, my fingers caressing the nape of his neck, until he spoke again.  
  
'She asked me to turn her back.'  
  
'Vamp her again?' I asked quietly.  
  
'Yeah,' he said, 'I couldn't. I couldn't even believe she was asking, you know? It's like ... the easiest way. It's not easy hanging on ... sometimes I thought I wouldn't even get through another minute, but she doesn't want to even try.'  
  
'You can't make her,' I said carefully.  
  
'I have to try,' he said hopelessly. 'Even if she's not a vampire, I still recognise her. She's still my sire. And, she's still in trouble. I won't abandon someone in her position. I can't. I would have given a lot to have had someone who knew.'  
  
He went silent.  
  
What could I say to that? I've never been in the position; never had my soul torn from me, only for it to be returned after centuries of killing. I don't know.  
  
'Tell me about your past,' I said suddenly.  
  
'Why?' he said.  
  
'I've been talking to Spike,' I started.  
  
He almost laughed, 'what do you have in common with Spike?'  
  
'Slayer blood,' I told him.  
  
'You mean ...'  
  
'That he's killed them,' I said.  
  
He stiffened and stated, 'you were asking him about the Slayers he's killed.'  
  
'Yes,' I said simply.  
  
'Why?'  
  
In response, I grabbed his hand and brought it to my stomach with my own, pushing up my shirt and displaying the wound I got from the fight with. He drew in a sharp breath and ran his fingers over the mark lightly. I didn't mind; it's healed a lot, and his touch was soothingly cool.  
  
'Routine patrol,' I told him, 'fighting a practical fledgling, for God's sake, and he stabbed me in the stomach. With my own stake.'  
  
'But you're okay?' he said, leaning up on one elbow to gaze down at me with concern.  
  
'Yeah, I'm fine,' I said, and started to cry.  
  
He comforted me now, scooting up the bed to lean on the wall and pull me across his lap. He settled me comfortably, his arms back around my waist. I turned into his chest and sobbed, faintly registering the crooning nonsense words he spilled into my ear and his large hand rubbing my back reassuringly.  
  
I cried for a minute or two more until I calmed, leaning against him and playing with a button on his shirt.  
  
'It scared me,' I said.  
  
'I know,' he said, resting his head on top of mine.  
  
'I like to think of myself as invincible,' I confessed, 'it's so hard to think ... I guess I've become inured to it, but ... I am going to die doing this.'  
  
'Maybe,' he said, and I could feel the effort it was for him to admit it.  
  
'Not maybe,' I said calmly. 'I will.'  
  
'Once you would never have admitted that,' he said, 'You would just have complained for days about your lack of a normal life.'  
  
'So?' I asked, frowning a little.  
  
'So now you're doing something about it,' he reminded me, 'you're not just accepting it, you're trying to keep going as long as you can, learning about other Slayers.'  
  
'Spike thinks all Slayers have a death wish,' I said, 'even me.'  
  
I felt his shrug. 'Maybe you do. But it doesn't mean you're going to give into it. Not now. Maybe not ever.'  
  
'I've told you I want the peace,' I said, concentrating very hard on the fabric of his shirt.  
  
'You have,' he agreed.  
  
'So what if one day I just ... can't?' I said, unable to find the words.  
  
He understood me well enough. 'Sounds like you already just couldn't,' he said, 'and yet here you are. Somebody find you? Help you?'  
  
'Yeah,' I confirmed.  
  
'And maybe that'll make the difference,' he said.  
  
I sighed, 'Spike said that too.'  
  
'And believe me when I say we came to the conclusion independently,' he said dryly.  
  
I chuckled.  
  
'I can be beaten,' I said with some difficulty. Half of fighting is in the confidence. Faith said something about that; not letting the negative thinking in, I think it was. But where she tripped up was not letting in any of the truth - you don't survive this gig. All you can do is try and keep doing it for as long as possible.  
  
'That's part of mortality,' he said. I opened my mouth, but before I could speak he went on, 'and immortality.'  
  
'Even the best aren't the best all of the time,' I quoted. No, I can't tell you where from.  
  
'Oh, you're always the best,' he said with pleasing certainty, 'but the day you win all the time will never come. You just have to make sure you lose in a way you can walk away from.'  
  
'Someday I won't walk away,' I said again, 'and ... when ... that happens, will you look after the others? They'll be targets at first ... I don't want anything to ...'  
  
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, effectively silencing me.  
  
'You know I will,' he said tenderly.  
  
'I love you,' I said softly.  
  
He shuffled us inelegantly so that he was lying flat on his back and I was sprawled over his chest. I slid a leg between his and draped an arm across his chest, wrapping myself around him. He kept an arm around my shoulders.  
  
'I was born in Galway, Ireland in 1727, the eldest son of a moderately wealthy land-owner,' he started. I closed my eyes and snuggled close against him.  
  
I was out before he even got to being vamped, which I think I'm actually pretty glad about. Maybe someday I'll ask him again.  
  
I fell asleep twice, in the real and dream dimensions, but only woke up once. Think that means I get double the sleep? 


	9. Better Than A Dream

TITLE: Better Than A Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 8  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Please. If they were mine, I would not be this cruel to either Angel or Buffy. Bad Joss! Bad!  
TIMELINE: After 'Shadow' and 'The Shroud of Rahmon'.  
SPOILERS: 'Shadow', 'Shroud Of Rahmon'.  
SYNOPSIS: More dreaminess.  
DISTRIBUTION: Have others, take; want any, ask.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Title is from a line in 'Angel Of Mine' (heh) by Eternal.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES 2: I'm pretty sure that 'Family' followed right on from 'No Place Like Home' and 'Shadow' from 'Fool For Love', which, if the shows are supposed to run in realtime, I think means that the Buffyverse is about two weeks behind the Angelverse. But I would like to claim artistic license in ignoring this, on the grounds it would make things difficult for me g.  
FEEDBACK: I'd appreciate it ;).  
RATING: PG-12  
  
  
  
  
I guess a lot of people have tried to escape whatever crappy stuff is going on in their lives by going to bed. Riley with his Psych degree would no doubt explain it as some sort of womb substitute. I with my lucid dreaming am explaining it as a boyfriend substitute.  
  
I've got to be strong out here. But in there ... in there with Angel, I can cry.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I just couldn't summon up the energy to try and get anywhere specific, so I let fate decide, regardless of how often fate *hasn't* got it right for me and Angel already.  
  
Once again, we ended up at my place; but my room was slightly different. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but I eventually realised this wasn't my room now, but how it was when I first moved to Sunnydale.  
  
Now *that* is probably psychologically significant.  
  
Anyway, Angel turned up right on schedule, meaning I didn't have a lot of time to sit and think. This is a good thing; my head isn't such a fun place to be lately.  
  
'Hey,' I said softly.  
  
'Hi,' he said, lingering by the door, and then I looked straight at him. I don't know quite what was showing in my eyes, but it was enough to make him come to my side almost faster than I could register him moving.  
  
I fell gratefully into his embrace, pressing myself tightly against the reassuring bulk of his body and burying my face in his chest. He's got a very good chest for burrowing into; broad, unyielding and cool.  
  
We sank to the floor by mutual unspoken decision, ending with him sitting leaning against the bed, facing out of the window, me sprawled across his lap, one knee on either side of his hips. My arms stayed locked around his neck and I hid my face in his flesh, in the dip between his shoulder and collarbone where it was made to fit.  
  
It would be an erotic position with anyone else, but with Angel, now, it was just comforting, simply exactly what I needed. It was home.  
  
He let me cry myself out into his shirt, rubbing my back, touching my hair, shushing me with soothing noises and a litany of nonsense words.  
  
Eventually I calmed, feeling a pang of embarrassment before it was swept away by the force of *him*, reminding me it was Angel, it was okay.  
  
'So,' I said, straightening, sniffling slightly, then laughing sheepishly, 'happy Thanksgiving.'  
  
His arms tightened around me painfully, but it was kind of nice, so rather than encourage him to pull back, I only snuggled closer, inhaling his familiar scent.  
  
'You too,' he said with a slight waver I didn't understand - barely caught, actually. 'I'd forgotten.'  
  
'Yeah, well,' I said, shrugging, 'it's all crass commercialization anyway.'  
  
Our eyes met and I saw a shadow of agony there before he smiled crookedly and banished it. 'Yeah.'  
  
We remained in that quiet state for a while after that. I'd almost forgotten comfortable, drawn-out silences, and just how ... comfortable they can be. All the silences I can remember being in lately have to do with my mom; with my mom in the hospital, with Dawn asking desperately for reassurances I can't provide.  
  
But at least I can have this. What does Dawn have, besides the memories of a life she never lived with a family that's not hers and a future filled with - God knows what. A certain blonde after her for sure, though for unsure purposes. And whether she succeeds or not, what happens to Dawn? Will she stay with us, and the false recollections will become reality, will she just disappear, or will she have never been?  
  
'We can't know that, Buffy,' Angel said quietly.  
  
Weird how you can hear yourself talking in your head and not realise you're saying it out loud as well.  
  
'Would you want her to stay?' he asked me.  
  
'I don't know,' I said slowly, 'she's not my sister. But she *is*. She's a person, you know? I want ...' I stopped, thinking about it and then saying, 'I know my memories aren't real, but I cant get my head round that they aren't. It makes me wonder, what's real, what happened and what did the monks just ... plant in my head so they could fit her in?'  
  
'Most of your memories will be true,' he offered, 'they wouldn't have got your subconscious to accept anything too alien to you.'  
  
'Like Riley?' I said mockingly. 'I remember Dawn encouraging me to date him.'  
  
Our eyes met, and I saw a familiar unsurety; a simple guy thing, namely 'when one's ex with whom one is still in love verbally abuses or insinuates verbal abuse on their current, do you join in?'  
  
He wanted to, I could tell. He's already expressed that he's not exactly a fan of Riley. But I let him off the hook anyway.  
  
'Doesn't matter,' I said, sighing dramatically, 'presumeably he was in the picture before Dawn anyway.'  
  
He smiled a little. 'She liked me,' he reminded me.  
  
'Apart from thinking you made me miserable,' I said idly.  
  
I could feel his sigh ripple across my hair.  
  
'Was it really so bad, Buffy?'  
  
'Sometimes,' I said honestly, leaning my head on his chest and intertwining our fingers. 'When I think about how many nights I just spent crying over you ...'  
  
'I'm sorry,' he said heavily.  
  
'I'm not blaming you,' I said, for the first time realising I truly didn't. 'It wasn't ... they probably weren't good nights for you either.'  
  
He kissed my hair fleetingly, 'But the good nights were ...'  
  
'Great,' I finished fervently, raising my head to look him in the eye, 'best ever. I just forgot that for a while.'  
  
He smiled at me gently, his hand on my back moving in long, languorous sweeps. I shivered pleasurably and leaned into him.  
  
'How are you?' he asked, suddenly and tentatively.  
  
I'm kind of starting to hate that question, and I think I'm going to have a lot more opportunities to hear it. It's not me that's sick; it's my mom. I've got to be strong because of that, and it's harder when faced with all the well-meaning concern. I know I'm coming off as ungrateful, and I'm not, really: I appreciate it, I love that people care. It's just ... the question makes me think about how I actually am, and I don't really want to do that.  
  
'Stressed,' I admitted to Angel, 'worried, crazy with anxiety. Filled with a sudden deep love for Mom and Dawn.'  
  
'That's all understandable,' he said reassuringly. It's kind of useful to have all this wisdom on tap. Maybe I'll be able to pick some up, like by osmosis. Or maybe I'll just learn it for myself.   
  
'Tell me she'll be okay?' I said pleadingly, knowing I sounded oh-so-young.  
  
'I wish I could,' he said softly, his pain for me evident in his voice.  
  
'I know,' I said, staring very intently at his top button. 'I don't really want to talk about it.'  
  
'Okay,' he said reassuringly.  
  
I got up in one movement, moving quickly over to the window and staring out at nothing in particular. I knew when he moved hesitantly to stand behind me.  
  
Not least because his reflection appeared in the glass of the window.  
  
I smiled a little, to see it, 'Is it weird for you to see yourself?'  
  
'What?' he said. Then his gaze followed mine and I saw the Angel in the glass grin. His reflection locked eyes with mine.  
  
'Yeah, I guess,' his smile faltered, 'I don't think I'd like it full time.'  
  
He perched on the end of the bed. I stayed where I was.  
  
'Why not?'  
  
'Done too much,' he said with an eloquent shrug.  
  
'Oh,' I said, watching his hazy figure in the dark glass. 'You know, I never think of you as not having a reflection.'  
  
'That's probably why I've suddenly acquired one, then,' he said dryly.  
  
'Maybe,' I said, suddenly becming fascinated with his reflection. 'How do you avoid them all the time?' I asked curiously.  
  
'Mirrors? It becomes instinctive after a while,' he said, 'you learn to keep just out of the line of anything reflective. A lot of the time people won't even notice you're not visible in them if you're not full-on. They assume you'll be there, so they see you.'  
  
'People aren't too intelligent, are they?' I said, turning around and leaning against the window.  
  
He laughed, 'Most people just see what they want rather than what's there. It's not exactly stupidity.'  
  
'Tell me about it,' I said, thrilled to be on safe ground. 'I'm not sure if there's anything Sunnydale residents can't forget.'  
  
His expression went thoughtful. 'It's easier for them that way. And for you. It gets harder when people know.'  
  
'Uh-oh,' I teased gently, 'do I sense a backstory?'  
  
'Do you remember a blonde cop from when you were ... last in LA?'  
  
'Yeah,' I said, remembering the terror I'd felt all through the Faith thing - that I hadn't wanted to admit was all for Angel - heightening when I realised what the cop intended to do. And the hurt when it had registered that this woman was important enough to Angel for him to have told her what he was - and I didn't know her.  
  
'She has trouble with it,' he said evasively.  
  
'What, she found out a few months back and it's only just occured to her it's weird?' I said in disbelief.  
  
'Not exactly,' he said, sighing. 'It just came up again recently and ... I don't know.'  
  
'What happened?' I said, businesslike.  
  
'I bit her,' he said, not looking at me.  
  
My jaw worked, but nothing came out. I tried again, 'What?'  
  
'There's a story,' he said.  
  
'I should damn well hope so,' I muttered. I certainly don't want to find out he's found some woman who's feeding herself to him regularly.  
  
Maybe the scar brands me as his, but the bite marked him as mine.  
  
'I was trying to fool some bad guys,' he revealed, 'it was the only way they'd buy it. I didn't take enough to permanently harm her.'  
  
'Mmm,' I said darkly.   
  
He didn't comment.  
  
'How long had it been since you ate something warm?' I asked bluntly.  
  
He still didn't answer.  
  
'Still hungry?' I said.  
  
'Both of me,' he said almost too quietly for me to hear, and his eyes flashed yellow as he looked at me.  
  
Cool. I've never seen a vampire go half game-face like that.  
  
I weighed up for a few moments. I can't be really killed while in a dream ... I think ... but memory and suggestion, and the dream experience ($15 a head, open Friday through Sunday, You'll Think You're Really There) would give both of us the feeling that he was feeding from me.  
  
We can't repeat that in the physical world. Ever. I know it, and he knows it. But it was - I can't explain it. I know he nearly killed me, but it was all about life. Him and me, and us together.  
  
And a feeling that Riley hasn't ever quite driven me to, to put it in the most non-gutter way I can think of.  
  
I reached for him, turning his face gently to mine, and he let me. I pulled him close, and he let me. I drew him to my neck, making my intent clear, and he didn't let me.  
  
'No,' he said softly, pulling back.  
  
'Don't try and tell me you don't want to,' I said, hurt, but noting the way his gaze was riveted to my thundering pulse.  
  
He switched his focus to my eyes for a moment, and then grabbed me and pulled us back to that position, his mouth at my throat; he bit down gently with blunt teeth and tongued my skin. I felt a stab of fear, the desire to reach for a stake, then a rush of pleasure overwhelmed it and I relaxed into his hold, sliding a hand into his dark hair.  
  
He kissed my neck once.  
  
He moved away.  
  
'Always,' he said, his eyes flashing yellow again as he backed away. He shot me one grin, and was out the door.  
  
He'll be back. I give good temptation. 


	10. Lives A Dream

TITLE: Lives A Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 9  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Listen closely ... they're not mine.  
TIMELINE: After 'Listening To Fear' and 'The Trial'.  
SPOILERS: Yes. Go away if you don't want to be spoiled on what's just been shown.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel dream. About each other.  
DISTRIBUTION: If you want it then please ask (I'll say yes), unless you have others, in which case, take.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: 'Lives a dream' is a line in 'Eleanor Rigby'. Still listening to that Beatles album.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES 2: Not my best, I'm afraid - the episodes didn't seem to offer opportunities for anything but major angst in areas I can't really do anything but guess about. I did my best :).  
FEEDBACK: Well, that depends on whether you want them to share dreams during repeats *evil grin* ...  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
I wasn't much surprised to open my eyes (well, not my real eyes, but my eyes in the dream, so ... yeah) and find myself on the hill outside the mansion. It's not a place I associate with happy memories, for obvious reasons. It reminds me of terror, and desperation, and watching the man I love nearly throw his life away for reasons I knew but could never fully understand.  
  
But it also reminds me of hope. Of the spectre of death banished in a flurry of pure-white snow. And of miracles.  
  
Maybe whoever, or whatever, started creating these dreams in us took pity on me tonight; saw I needed, more than ever, to remember miracles can happen.  
  
Or maybe the creator took pity on us, because Angel was sitting on the ground, staring out over the vista of Sunnydale, and just the slump of his broad shoulders revealed to me the depths of his despair.  
  
I walked over and dropped next to him. He reached for me without prevarication, pulling me tightly to him, enveloping me in his arms and burying his face in my neck. I wrapped my own arms around his back, finding the same solace in him that he seemed to be needing from me as he enfolded me in a tight grip. I felt him tremble in my embrace and stroked his hair, feeling his answering caresses on my back as we rocked wordlessly together.  
  
It was almost a relief to put my own worries away for a moment; not forget, I couldn't forget, but to just comfort Angel. To hold him, and to let him hold me.  
  
After a long, cathartic while, he lifted his head from my shoulder and gave me a weak smile.  
  
I smiled back, letting my hand slip around to his cheek. 'You okay?'  
  
'Not really,' he said, 'you?'  
  
I looked out over the panorama of Sunnydale town. 'Not really.'  
  
I felt his long, heavy duster settle over my shoulders and reached up to pull it closer around my neck. My fingers brushed his, gripped them, and I drew comfort from their coolness.  
  
He shifted up next to me and I laid my head on his shoulder, our entwined hands resting between us as he settled his chin on the top of my head.  
  
'Want to tell me about it?' he asked softly.  
  
I gave a half shrug, 'More of the same,' I said quietly. 'Mom's sick with a disease I can't fight, Dawn's prey for some psycho chick I can't fight. I'm in the best shape I've ever been in, and suddenly,' I gave a bark of bitter laughter, 'I'm assailed with stuff it's useless against.'  
  
'Maybe this isn't supposed to be your fight,' he suggested gently.  
  
'Maybe,' I agreed, my eyes flooding with sudden, unbidden tears, 'but everything else always has been.' He wiped away the tears as they slid down my cheekbones, but his tenderness only increased my sobs. 'I can't stand feeling this helpless!' I wailed abruptly.  
  
'I help the helpless,' he quipped sweetly.  
  
'I know you do,' I said, sniffling and quieting. 'But Mom and Dawn are even more than me. Mom's sick and Dawn's just a kid. The tumour is causing personality changes, and Dawn can't handle that ... and Mom didn't even know what she'd been saying ... and I ...'  
  
'Have to be strong?' he guessed.  
  
'What have I got if I'm not?' I asked him honestly.  
  
'Love?' he offered.  
  
'That doesn't help them,' I said.  
  
'Your love for them,' he said, 'your friends' love for you. They're there for you, if you need to let it out. You know that.'  
  
'I do know that,' I told him, 'but I can't. I won't.'  
  
I felt him give a frustrated sigh against my hair. 'You can.'  
  
'I can't, Angel,' I repeated, 'I ... they ... I just can't.'  
  
'Is this about your Mom or Dawn?' he questioned.  
  
'I won't over Mom,' I said firmly, 'I can't over Dawn.'  
  
A sudden breeze washed over us.  
  
'Your Mom knows about Dawn,' Angel stated, with a far-off lilt to his voice.  
  
'The personality changes I mentioned?' I said. He nodded and I explained, 'She's seeing things as they really are. She knew Dawn wasn't her daughter.'  
  
I noticed I felt better talking about the supernatural of Dawn than the emotional. So long I spent wishing I'd never heard of the Slayerhood and all that came with it; and now I'm preferring thinking about it. That's irony. Or, depending on whether your glass is half-full or half-empty, poetic justice.  
  
'How did she take it?' he asked.  
  
'She told me to look after her,' I said with a fond smile.  
  
'What did you say?' he said.  
  
'I said I would,' I said, a little affronted he even had to ask. 'I guess family's what you make of it.'  
  
'I guess,' he agreed with a wavering inflection.  
  
'What's happened with you?' I said with sudden concern that almost rivalled that for my mom, not recognising his tone but understanding the weakness behind it.  
  
'Do you remember meeting Doyle?' he asked, his gaze fastened on a middle distance.  
  
'Um, yeah,' I said, furrowing my brow, 'at Thanksgiving ... but when I came after Faith he wasn't -'  
  
'It's just been the first anniversary of his death,' Angel cut in, his tone carefully emotionless.  
  
I squeezed his hand and felt his absent, instinctive response.  
  
'And I commemorated it by watching Dru vamp Darla,' he said, and now his voice shook perceptibly.  
  
'Oh my God,' I breathed in shock, then realised and turned to him, swiftly bringing my hand up to cup his cheek. He closed his eyes and turned his face into my palm, his face displaying an abject misery which broke my heart a little more. I freed my other hand from the clasp it was in with his and cradled his face in my hands, pressing his forehead to mine and trying to comfort him with random murmurs and soothing inanities.  
  
When he calmed, I waited hesitantly, wondering whether he wanted to talk about it, and whether I should make him if he didn't. He's not exactly Mr Share-a-lot, but I know how much of a toll holding stuff in takes, and I get the feeling Wesley and Cordelia haven't been the most approachable of people over Darla. I don't even really want to hear it; but better me than nobody.  
  
'So what happened?' I prompted carefully.  
  
'Darla was dying from a disease she had when she was human,' he recounted slowly, 'but she was just ... she was only just starting to get it, you know? She was feeling the soul ... and okay she wasn't really starting to get it because she was trying to get herself vamped by some idiot from a nothing bloodline ... but she knew she was dying. She didn't want to die.'  
  
His eyes were bleak, and though it was my hand which was running through his hair, my fingers which were softly stroking his cheek, I knew it was Darla he was seeing; but that he would come back to me.  
  
'Most people don't want to die,' I said gently, and for a moment he saw me, and we exchanged bittersweet smiles. We've both fought death. Together, in a lot of cases.  
  
'I did the trials for her,' he went on, 'I thought she needed the chance ... and it wasn't even worth it.'  
  
His face twisted in pain, and his eyes closed briefly.  
  
'The trials?' I said.  
  
'Challenges,' he said distractedly, 'three challenges where you gamble their life and yours.'  
  
My fingers stilled and I swallowed hard.  
  
'Gamble?' I enquired.  
  
'You lose, you die, they die,' he said, unconsciously leaning his head back into my touch. I resumed my rythmic combing, but I really wasn't happy. Gambling his life - I trust his judgement now, and if he thinks Darla's worth it, then okay ... but I don't. He'll never believe it, but I don't think most people are worth it over him. It won't stop him risking it all, for Darla, or anyone else, probably; and if he was any other way he wouldn't be Angel. But I don't have to like it; nearly eighteen months away from him, a year with Riley, and the thought of Riley's death still doesn't strike the terror in me that Angel's does. It seems like forever means forever.  
  
As if I ever really doubted that, deep down.  
  
'I made it,' he said, 'I accepted death and I won, but he said she was living her second chance. And now she's not anymore. I would have turned her, but she was ready to go ... only she was so scared.' He leaned his head on my chest and I moved my touches to the nape of his neck. 'I would have stayed with her the whole way.'  
  
'Except Dru's back,' I said, absently wondering if she'd be coming for Spike in the near future.  
  
'It was revenge,' he said, his voice breaking, 'it was because of me.'  
  
'You don't know that,' I said strongly. 'She just turned up? Was lucid for long enough to decide it'd be fun?'  
  
'No,' he admitted reluctantly, 'she was with Wolfram and Hart.'  
  
'You did everything you could,' I whispered, having no way to be sure, but knowing positively that he had.  
  
'If I'd killed her earlier ...' he said.  
  
'Don't get into "if", Angel,' I advised, feeling like the older between us, 'there's no point. You've got to deal with what is.'  
  
'And what is, is that she's a vampire again,' he gave a bitter laugh I very much recognised from myself before. 'Sired by her own grandchilde. How's that for Springer material.'  
  
'I think all of us would do okay on Springer,' I told him.  
  
The sky was beginning to lighten; warning that the night was ending, here and in reality. We watched it dispassionately, loath to leave each other. I locked him in my embrace again, and we stayed motionless for long minutes, drawing love and strength from each other; then Angel pulled away, rising and walking to the edge of the hill, where a steep drop headed to the town.  
  
He paused a moment, then turned to face me. 'I felt like she was *my* second chance,' he said pensively.  
  
'No. You're your second chance,' I told him with certainty.  
  
He gave a tiny half-smile, coming back over to me, leaning down and brushing his lips gently over mine.  
  
'You're my second chance,' he said.  
  
'Then be around to take it with me,' I said, looking into his eyes.  
  
He walked away from me, then spun again as he reached the edge.  
  
'I'll do my best,' he called back, before stepping fearlessly off the edge and disappearing in a fairly worrying manner, even for a dream.   
  
Nice exit, but I wasn't about to try it; I just stayed there until I woke up, like a sensible person.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
NOTE: Okay, I know I had that bit in my feedback plea about installments during repeats ... but I really don't think I'll do any, because 1. I won't have material from episodes to work with and they would therefore be short(er) and rather boring and 2. I'm writing another fic which is becoming quite long and I want to concentrate on that for a while. I'll do one after the tenth episodes air, and then I may do a Christmas special (how far do repeats run over Christmas?) with some nice fluff before picking up when the eleventh episodes are shown. Questions? Comments? 


	11. Any Dream Will Do

TITLE: Any Dream Will Do  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 10  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, and I kind of don't even want them anymore (well, alright. I do want Angel).   
TIMELINE: After 'Into The Woods' and 'Reunion'.  
SPOILERS: 'Into the Woods' and 'Reunion'.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel dream of each other.  
DISTRIBUTION: If you have others, go for this one, if you don't, ask and I'll say yes.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This was supposed to be the 'whoo-hoo, he's gone!' fic, but now it turns out it's going to be angst. Again. I haven't seen 'Into The Woods', but from the synopsis, I don't like it; I think having Buffy run after Riley like that is an insult to the character, or at least who the character used to be, and this is my attempt to rationalise.  
FEEDBACK: Please do. Especially if I've completely misinterpreted things g.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
  
How am I supposed to dream when I can't even sleep? When I lie awake in a cold bed, replaying over and over the last couple of days. Riley. Riley above me, Riley telling me he was leaving unless I gave him a reason to stay.  
  
Riley looking up from the vampire girl's fangs in his arms, and me realising that I recognised his expression only from when we were in bed.  
  
And Angel was mixed up in there too. Angel above me, Angel telling me he was leaving despite me wanting him to stay.  
  
Looking up from a scene of devastation for my eyes to meet his, and for them to stay locked on his back as he walked away from me.  
  
I'm not sure I like that those images are so closely intertwined.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I don't remember closing my eyes; but I suppose I must have because Something took over and I opened them again on a flat, barren plane of hard grey rock. I looked around in confusion, and there was nothing and no-one on the horizon.  
  
In fact, there was no horizon. Just space. Blackness, lit by tiny points that couldn't be the source of the harsh, relentless glare that forced me to cover my eyes and squint while I turned this way and that, searching.  
  
If I could have Riley meet me here, in my dream, supplanting Angel, would I?  
  
I guess I'll never know, because it's Angel I share my subconscious with, as surely as I share the heart and soul I so easily claimed were Riley's.  
  
It was Angel silhouetted against that bright light, crossing the distance between us smoothly and rather more quickly than I would have liked. I didn't know how to react to him anymore. There's always been a very simple physical desire between us that would remain even if we hated each other; the curse restrained it in the real world, and the ghost of Riley intruded on it here as much as the ghost of Angel encroached on Riley and I there. In the dreamscape where we repeatedly found ourselves, I wasn't sure if the former was an issue, and the latter no longer was.  
  
Not that it mattered, because he looked to be in a really bad mood.  
  
"Hi," I said tentatively, wondering what I should tell him about Riley's rapid departure. I was pretty sure he'd care. Just maybe not for the details.  
  
"You must be in about as good a humour as I am," he said uninterestedly, presumeably about our surroundings.  
  
"What? Sure, fine, whatever," I said, slightly confused as he dropped down into a crouch on the impenetrable surface, produced a knife, and began to scratch away.  
  
I knew he had some obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but this was just strange and worrying.  
  
I knelt next to him and gently covered his hand with mine. He jerked it off.  
  
"Hey," I said, reaching for him again, "hey... what's wrong?"  
  
"Nothing's wrong," he said evenly, getting up and putting the ornate knife away.  
  
I looked down at where he'd been scratching. Underneath the drab grey he had revealed a jewel-coloured pool which shifted continuously as I watched, entranced.  
  
"What's that?" I asked him, balancing on my hands and knees to peer into the gap.  
  
"Means one of us has something to look forward to," he said, his tone mocking, but carrying an undercurrent of the familiar self-disgust. "Probably you," he went on, "mine's sure to be a uniform black."  
  
"What the hell are you talking about?" I said, rising and facing him. Our eyes met. His held none of the warmth I expected, was accustomed to seeing for me in his gaze. They were emotionless. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, Angel's had pretty much shut up shop.  
  
But then I guess they can't be, because once I knew what I was looking for I could always recognise Angelus in an instant simply from his malevolent stare; his emotions were even clearer in his eyes than Angel's are.  
  
This emptiness was almost more disturbing.  
  
"The subconscious," he said in an exaggerated whisper, leaning close, "it's all around."  
  
"We're standing on one of our subconscious'?" I said, wrinkling my nose.  
  
"Of course not," he said, laughing, "don't be so literal."  
  
Okay. What?!  
  
"What's with you?" I said suspiciously, twisting to follow him as he prowled around me in restless circles.  
  
"Off day. Several days, in fact," he said, fastening his eyes on my neck one second and the floor the next.  
  
I remembered what he'd told me last time I dreamt with him; about Darla and her re-introduction to vamphood at Drusilla's hands. A part of me wailed 'but what about *me*?', but I ignored it; some part of me was morbidly eager to exchange recounting my own, raw pain for soothing his, but most of me just murmured insistently that I should have remembered this.  
  
I went directly to him, grabbing for his arms. He tried to shy away, but it's true, what he once told me - I'm stronger than him, and he couldn't pull out of my determined grip.   
  
I shifted one hand up to his face, cupping his chhek, turning his face to me. "Did Darla..." I began gently.  
  
He pulled away again, and, surprised, I couldn't stop him, but he didn't go far.  
  
Just far enough so I couldn't touch him.  
  
"She rose on schedule, despite my best efforts," he told me. I caught a brief flicker of emotion; regret, shame, sadness, before his gaze shuttered again.  
  
I followed gradually as he inched away from me, trying to radiate peace, as if he were a hurt animal hissing and spitting and likely to bite.  
  
"Your best efforts?" I said, pitching my voice low.  
  
"Tried to stake her before she rose... tried to stop her committing a massacre with Dru... ended up aiding and abetting."  
  
My breath caught in my throat, "You didn't..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Kill."  
  
"I locked a dozen people in a windowless room with two vampiresses I knew to be hungry, skilled and probably unstable," he said matter-of-factly, looking straight at me. "Is that killing?"  
  
My breath was just gone. Screw their stability; I was worried about his. What happened to saving souls?  
  
I sank to the floor, half-expecting to feel him catch me and half-glad when he didn't.  
  
"Guess the demon is a little closer than I thought," he said from behind me, and I whipped around, feeling that comment a little closer to Angelus' home than I liked.  
  
"Or I'm just darker," he said very close, and when I turned around he was there, kneeling uncomfortably close.  
  
"Or more depressed," I threw back, not giving him an inch.  
  
His eyes darkened and he sat down, careful not to touch me.  
  
"What else did you do?" I persisted.  
  
"Fired Cordy, Wes and Gunn," he muttered reluctantly, not meeting my eyes, like a naughty schoolboy.  
  
Which is weird enough all by itself, because all the time I've known Angel he's hardly ever been anything else but determinedly adult, completely controlled.  
  
"Why?" I demanded.  
  
He shrugged.  
  
"Why?" I said, more loudly.  
  
"I don't want then getting hurt!" he cried, "And if they stayed... Dru and Darla are coming for me. I don't want them in the way."  
  
"And if they choose to be in the way?" I asked.  
  
"Tough," he said stubbornly.  
  
"It's their right," I countered.  
  
"Then it's mine to make sure they don't have to be," he said, straightening up, meeting my eyes again.  
  
From the tone, I thought he'd be mad, but when our eyes met his showed vulnerability the most. Fear. Loneliness. All the stuff that tugs at my heart, however unwilling.  
  
I crawled over to him. He watched, but he didn't try and move away; and when I reached out my hand cautiously and grazed his with my fingertips, he slowly uncurled his clenched fist and let me take his hand in mine.  
  
"I kind of don't get the point anymore," he said softly.  
  
"Tell me about it," I said.  
  
I tried very hard not to whine, but I guess he heard the plaintive note in my voice, because he asked me what was wrong.  
  
Now, obviously Angel has a lot to deal with right now. I'd love to say I was trying to take his mind off it all by spilling; but truthfully, I was desperate to have his comfort, feel the love he'd always poured out so unstintingly, even though I knew it might get uncomfortable for him.  
  
"Well, my mom is almost certainly going to be okay," I said, "but I split up with Riley." I stared resolutely at our hands. "Well, he split up with me. We kind of split up with each other."  
  
I heard an explosion behind me and twisted around to see a display of bright colours fading like fireworks in the emptiness there.  
  
"Sorry," Angel said, his earlier rancour apparently forgotten.  
  
Vampiric mood swings. This is great. As if he weren't unpredictable enough.  
  
"Tactful," I said, pulling my hand from his.  
  
"You knew I didn't like him," he said softly, "but I am sorry, Buffy. You..." he exhaled hard. "I know you loved him."  
  
"Funny," I said, not meaning it, "because he left 'cause he was convinced I didn't."  
  
Angel shifted beside me.  
  
"He actually left? Physically left?"  
  
"Yeah," I said, not needing to say who that had reminded me of.  
  
"And did you?"  
  
"Did I what?" I said.  
  
"Love him," Angel clarified.  
  
"I don't know," I said, heaving a sigh.  
  
"Really," Angel said, and I could hear the faint return of anger in his voice. "Only you seemed pretty sure when you told me you did."  
  
I bit my lip and didn't answer. Well, I had no answer.  
  
"Ironic, really," he commented, "that the only time you admitted to loving him was to me." He laughed bitterly.  
  
"I was hurt," I said quietly.  
  
"So was I," he snapped.  
  
"So was he," I said, jumping up and facing him. "I just found out that the past couple of weeks he's been going out and letting vampires bite him for kicks. You know why?"  
  
He rose slowly, looming over me.   
  
"Do I care?" he hissed.  
  
"Because he wanted to know what power you had over me. What power Dracula had over me," I spat back.  
  
"Maybe we just speak to a part of you he can't touch," Angel said, dismissing it.  
  
I closed my eyes, seeing the truth in that. Riley was sweet. He was nice. He was a good, normal guy, at least until he made himself a vampire snack bar.  
  
He wasn't enough for me.  
  
I felt Angel move closer, sensed his power wash over me and smelled his scent up close.   
  
"Open your eyes. Look at me."  
  
He tilted my chin up with gentle fingers at odds with his harsh tone. I looked at him, into the familiar brown depths of his eyes, and I wanted him.  
  
"Did you love him?" he said calmly.  
  
I didn't answer, feeling the beginnings of a slow burn at his sudden domineering approach.  
  
Not that he's not built for it... off-topic. But in any case, I'm the Slayer. I'm not built to take it.  
  
I tried to back away, but he followed, implacable. "Answer me."  
  
"I don't know," I bit out.  
  
"How can you not know?" he cried in frustration, betraying his own anger.  
  
"Because you're my only experience there and I never had to wonder with you!" I exploded. It seemed to blindside him; well, it was kind of a surprise to me. I hadn't meant to admit that. Not here, and not now.  
  
"From the second time I saw you," I continued more quietly, "it was just something I lived with."  
  
"Thank you for making it seem like such fun," he said with hostility, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it - at my words, his eyes had gone liquid chocolate and from the unconscious flexing of his fingers against his pants, I could tell he ached to touch me.  
  
"But it doesn't matter, does it?" I said, desperate to simply grab him, but needing to have this out - and if it couldn't be with Riley, Angel would just have to do. "Because you're gone and even eighteen months later you're stopping me moving on."  
  
He stilled and stared at me with wide eyes.  
  
"You're blaming me for him leaving?"  
  
He sounded confused, little-boy-lost. I breathed out in frustration. As long as we were having an argument, he deserved at least for me to not project onto him. "I blame you for *you* leaving."  
  
He was silent for a moment. "You know why I did that."  
  
"Yeah. I know why. I understand why. God, I even agree with why," I snapped, "but it doesn't make me feel better at this juncture, okay? Because all I can see is that a guy tells you he loves you and then he leaves."  
  
"It won't always..." he tried.  
  
"I don't care about 'always'," I said tiredly. "I'm hurting now, thank you."  
  
He made a move towards me, but I evaded him.  
  
"You did love him," he said with a desolate certainty.  
  
"Does it matter?" I wailed. "He's gone."  
  
I didn't have to say 'I loved you and you're gone', because we both heard it clearly anyway.  
  
But it wasn't a case of 'I loved you'. It was a case of 'I love you'. And because of that, I owed him the truth.  
  
"I didn't love him,' I said quietly, stepping closer to Angel. He started to speak, but I held up a hand to stop him and went on, "but I could have. There's not a lot of things in my life that have potential, Angel. Riley and I did. I should have grabbed it."  
  
"Then why didn't you?" he said softly, swallowing hard.  
  
"You," I said, looking up into his face.  
  
"Don't blame me for this, Buffy. I'm staying away from you, remember?" he said, getting stirred up again.  
  
"Except for here," I said to myself.  
  
He caught it anyway. "I'm not in control of that."  
  
"Then who is?" I said, annoyed.  
  
"Ultimately? I don't know. But I do know that any time you want to leave, you can," he told me, backing away again and crossing his arms defensively.  
  
"But any time I want to stop, I can't," I said.  
  
"Do you want to stop?" he asked me, and the hurt Angel was back again.  
  
I thought about it. He'd been comfort, at first - a release I couldn't take in the real world. But now it seemed like he was just one more person to deal with, another set of problems to worry about. "I don't know."  
  
"I need you," he said softly, almost in supplication, and I saw the breaking spirit he was suddenly too afraid to leave open in the world.  
  
"I need you," I replied. "But I really need you out there."  
  
He came to me, wrapped a tentative arm around my shoulders, and I let him pillow my head on his chest, knowing we hadn't resolved anything; both of us wanting the presence of the other but lacking the energy for any more emotional talks.  
  
We stayed together in an uneasy silence for the rest of the night.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
I have promised holiday fluff for this series, and it will appear; but it will probably be New Year's rather than Christmas fluff, because I'm a little pushed for time. Happy holidays! 


	12. Christmas Dreaming

TITLE: Christmas Dreaming  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep interlude  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Do you really need me to tell you they're not mine?  
TIMELINE: Early morning, January 1st 2001.  
SPOILERS: Probably (inlcuding season 5).  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel both have a sucky New Years' and meet in their dreams.  
DISTRIBUTION: Have it, just give me an address.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a New Year fic, but I couldn't find any songs with either a title or line in that said 'New Year' and 'dream', so I've cheated and used a bit of the song title 'Christmas Dreaming (A Little Early This Year)'. I know you don't mind g.  
FEEDBACK: Do you really need me to tell you this either? :)  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
Mother recently out of hospital and still on strict early nights. Demanding faux younger sister. Friends loved up. Own boyfriend recently ex. Usual bad television schedule.  
  
Conclusion: I've known more interesting New Year's Eves.   
  
Good time to perfect my lucid dreaming technique, right?  
  
* * * * *  
  
Despite having reservations about how effective dream alcohol would be - especially dream alcohol of my making, considering I hardly ever touch the stuff - I did my best to produce wine, safe in the knowledge that Angel most likely wouldn't tell me even if it was horrible. Yay for eighteenth century manners.  
  
I'd chosen the place carefully; the Bronze. Familiar to both, but with no terrible connotations for either of us. Music on tap (not live; I'm not quite up to creating a horde of musicians). Me waiting, perched on the pool table, wearing the Christas outfit I yearned for but couldn't actually afford, sipping a glass of the wine and trying not to look like I'd made anything resembling an effort, because, after all, I am still officially in mourning over Riley.  
  
But that was over, and it was New Year. Just the time to put him behind me. And I never let him into my time here with Angel. Wasn't that indicative, if I thought of it; that I was ready to try and out Riley behind me when I'd never really done that with Angel?  
  
I'm not sure exactly what it was indicative of, but I'm sure it was.  
  
"Is this a bad time?"  
  
It's not often that I'm so busy thinking that I miss someone, much less a vampiric someone, coming up and standing right behind me. It was embarrassing.  
  
"No," I said, a smile crossing my lips at his voice. I twisted to look at him. He looked fairly glowery.  
  
"Okay," I said mock-sternly, hopping down lightly from the counter and turning to face him full-on. "I've had a fairly bad New Year's, as they go, and in the spirit of Auld Lang Syne or whatever, I decided to come here and share some of the festive spirit with you, to give both of us a chance to get away from the big bad world out there. And if you don't comply, I'm not back in school for a while yet and I can come to L.A and yell at you for being yet another purveyor of rotten celebrations."  
  
"Promise?" He half-smiled, and I returned it, relieved; last time we'd been here he'd been pretty unstable. I hadn't been sure if he'd take my admittedly rambling declaration in good humour.  
  
"You may want to block out the world out there," he said, "but what about the one in here?" he tapped his head, fixing big, brown eyes on me.  
  
"Drug it," I said firmly, holding his eyes confidently with my own and whisking a full glass out from underneath the counter.  
  
He smiled properly then, reaching for the glass.  
  
"You did this?" he gestured to the red liquid sloshing inside the glass.  
  
"Without a grape in sight," I assured him.  
  
He lifted the glass to his lips, taking a sip. I watched carefully for his reaction.  
  
"That's not bad," he said, apparently sincerely.  
  
"Really?" I said eagerly, then caught myself. "I'm not much of a drinker."  
  
His eyes flicked to the half-empty glass I was swinging absently by my side.  
  
"Still my first," I told him brightly.  
  
"Hmm," he said, the smile metamorphosing into his trademark crooked smirk. He came over the counter in about a second - without spilling his drink, I noticed - and came up near. I stifled a gasp and leant back to see him as his body pressed close to mine.  
  
"Don't appear to be slurring any words..." he said teasingly, "your pupils are dilated..."  
  
"That's not only a symptom of intoxication," I informed him from the traces of a long-gone Biology lesson, because he'd said that immediately having trouble getting my tongue around the words.  
  
"What else is it a symptom of, then?" he said, grinning fully again.  
  
I remembered what it was and wished I hadn't said anything, possibly ever.  
  
"Um... your pupils dilate... when they see something they like..." I mumbled, mentally screaming at myself.  
  
He thought it was *funny*, the bastard.  
  
"What flattery," he said, laughing, easing himself out from between the counter and me and wandering over to a couch by thr stage.  
  
"I don't think yours were natural size then!" I called in a pathetic attempt at a comeback. I mean, who ever looks at someone's pupils?  
  
He looked over and patted the couch beside him. I went to him and sat down, careful not to touch him to make my displeasure clear.  
  
"How was your Christmas?" he said in a conciliatory tone.  
  
"Oh, fine," I said, curling up and laying my head on the back of the couch. "Not great, because mom was ill and all... I can't make the present choices she does, Dawn wasn't too pleased... and then I kind of screwed up the Christmas dinner."  
  
"I hear you can buy wonderful ready-made Christmas meals these days," he offered.  
  
"It's not the same," I explained, quoting from both Dawn and my mother.  
  
"And an excess of gifts?" he asked.  
  
"I did alright," I said, my smile slipping as I recalled whose names hadn't appeared on gifts under the tree - Riley, my Dad. Angel himself. "I think Mom being okay was kind of my big present," I said idly, "I mean... like, spiritually, or..."  
  
"I know what you mean," he said, thankfully stopping me from falling headlong into confusing explanations.  
  
"I'm guessing you didn't do much for Christmas? Or, do Christmas?" I said, remembering my neglected drink and taking a long gulp.  
  
"Never do," he said, leaning his head back and looking at me pathetically as I propped myself above him. I giggled, and he reached for my hand. I let him take it and he stared at our fingers, intertwining them, his big hand around my small one.  
  
"And probably not such a good New Years if you're here at about two o' clock in the morning," I said.  
  
"Hey, you're here too!" he protested, "what are you saying, that I'm the last resort?"  
  
"Actually, yes," I said, giggling again, but stroking his hand to let him know I hadn't really meant it.  
  
"They're all the same anyway," he said, smiling.  
  
"Maybe to you," I said, purposely keeping my tone light, "anyway, happy New Year." I held my glass out for a toast.  
  
"Happy New Year," he echoed, straightening up to clink his glass with mine. I raised my glass to my lips, and was surprised when he took my arm gently and twined his elbow about mine. Getting what he was doing, I lifted my glass up again around his arm and we sipped delicately, our eyes meeting over the rims. He's got very good forearms, I noticed.  
  
"Here," he said, pulling his arm away. I looked at his fist in fascination as he held it in front of me and slowly uncurled his fingers.  
  
And offered me the piece of coal hidden within.  
  
"But I was a good girl this year, Santa," I said in puzzlement, taking the lump off him anyway.  
  
He grinned. "It's a tradition. If a dark stranger is the first of the year to pass over the threshold, it's good luck."  
  
"Okay," I said, "but this is hardly threshold-ey. And you're not a stranger."  
  
He raised a slightly reproachful eyebrow.  
  
"But I can always use some good luck," I added.  
  
"Can't we all?" he said dryly.  
  
"It's also considered lucky to kiss someone at midnight..." I said, watching him from under my lashes.  
  
"Yeah, it is," he agreed.  
  
"Well, and I didn't have anyone to kiss this year..." I said encouragingly.  
  
"I don't think I was awake at midnight anyway," he said thoughtfully.  
  
I couldn't contain the little thrill that went through me when he said that. Kind of not, because midnight is really early for a vampire and he shouldn't have gone to bed by then, but that means he wasn't kissing anyone at midnight. Not even Cordy. But it also means he was probably all alone, and I don't want him lonely either.  
  
Just not-lonely with friends, rather than not-lonely with a girlfriend.  
  
"Then we both have catch-up," I said brightly, unconsciously wetting my lips.  
  
"Guess so," he said, then he reached up, tilted my chin down as he inclined his face up, and we kissed.  
  
It was sweet. A gentle, gentlemanly whisper of his lips over mine, a bare brush that set my lips to tingling and my heart to racing.  
  
And then was gone.  
  
Damn.  
  
"Did you make any resolutions?" he asked, settling back, apparently perfectly content.  
  
"Only to keep myself and assorted friends and family alive," I said through gritted teeth, "you?"  
  
"Kill assorted family," he said, staring intently into his glass.  
  
"That was negativity," I warned grouchily.  
  
"And to keep myself alive," he said.  
  
I glared.  
  
"Undead?" he said, noticing my expression.  
  
"Whatever," I said.  
  
"Are you sulking?" he said, peering at me.  
  
"No," I said, slouching and running my finger around the rim of my glass.  
  
"You're sulking," he said with calm certainty.  
  
I breathed out loudly, neither confirming or denying. Well, there's no point in incriminating yourself.  
  
"Didn't feel that was lucky enough?" he teased.  
  
I cheered up slightly; that had potential.  
  
"I have been having a run of bad luck lately," I said, looking at him, hopefully not hopefully. I would have tried for coyly, but when you're a Slayer it becomes kind of hard to pull off 'coy'.  
  
I thought it was a pretty blatant come-on, but he didn't initiate anything more... then thinking about it, I realised he (more or less) never has. If there's been an aggressor in our relationship, it's definitely me. Obviously he wasn't going to break the habits of a lifetime.  
  
So why should I?  
  
I leant into him, nuzzling into his expansive chest, and when he looked down at me I curled an arm around his neck, brought his mouth down to mine and kissed him.  
  
He didn't respond for a moment, while I had a panicked moment thinking I'd *really* misjudged things, then his hand slipped into my hair and he gently held my head in place so he could tease my lips with his tongue and then... mmmmmm.  
  
I don't even remember stopping. And I woke up, and none of the problems had disappeared... but for that night they were lifted, and it turned out not to be such a bad New Years after all. And if I'm lucky? It'll start a trend for the rest of the year.  
  
Probably not. Though when I woke up I still had that lump of coal; maybe it'll help.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
As you probably know, on January 9th America gets a new 'Buffy' ep followed by an 'Angel' repeat. The week after is new 'Angel' preceeded by a repeat 'Buffy'. Given that this series is about Buffy and Angel working over what's happened to both of them (and that I'm quite lazy), I'm going to wait until after that new 'Angel' to write an installment of 'Only When I Sleep' for both eps rather than one after 'Triangle' *and* one after 'Redefinition'. If the pattern of new 'Buffy' old 'Angel', old 'Buffy' new 'Angel', carries on, I'll be doing the same then; a lot of it is to do with having enough new ground to work with, seeing as the fics are pretty short already.  
  
  
Happy New Year! 


	13. Dream Of Now, Dream Of Then

TITLE: Dream Of Now, Dream Of Then  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 11  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: I'm really not capable of the brilliance of AtS, or BtVS (first few seasons anyway).  
TIMELINE: After 'Triangle' and 'Redefinition' (just pretend they were simultaneous, and you'll be fine).  
SPOILERS: Darla arc, 'Triangle'.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy dreams with... the finer parts of Angel.  
DISTRIBUTION: Anyone can have it, but please ask first :).  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I pretty much did Surly Angel in the last installment. Obsessive Voiceover Automaton Angel will get old fast, not least for me, g and I believe it's going to last at least another couple of eps. They can handle it, they have other characters and, yeah, plots; a one-on-one dream/discussion fic probably can't. So I'm not going to try. Instead: Darla said it wasn't Angel or Angelus; last time it wasn't 'Angel' the soul was in the ether. So I'm going to work on the basis that the bit of Angel that's getting through to Buffy - that wants to get through to Buffy - is the saner bit that's currently stuck/hiding/sitting depressed wherever and therefore hopefully avoid the heartbreak of one-sided conversation. It was pretty much a straight choice between going this way and flinging the computer out the window, but I'll think about it for the next one.  
FEEDBACK: Those method thoughts? Also depend on response g. So tell me if you think it works! (or if it doesn't, but please be nice).  
RATING: PG-12  
THANKS: Being now halfway through (whoohoo!) I feel compelled to pour out gratitude to everyone who has sent me feedback on this series, because without it I would have given up (or at the very least still be languishing around the third episodes). I haven't got room to put names, but it's all been appreciated. Special shout-out to all my dedicated feedbackers, who've sent it for all or nearly all the parts; again, no room to name, but you know who you are, and you're hugely, wildly appreciated ;).  
  
  
  
  
It's completely possible to cry yourself to sleep. I mean, I knew that, because I've done it before, a lot. I think what I meant was, it's possible to fake-cry yourself to sleep. To weep and sob at any time without ever being totally sure why you're doing it, but it's expected and you feel like you should, and it is kind of a release, so you do. But it doesn't really mean anything.  
  
I'm not being inhumanly unemotional and unfeeling here: I miss Riley. I do. I'm sad that he's gone, and about why he's gone, that he felt flirting with death was preferable to talking to me, and especially that I never realised. Maybe part of me is sadder at losing the chance of habing something than I am at losing him specifically, but it's an ache. It is getting better, but it still hurts.  
  
It's just that that hurt has to contend with another abandonment issue. I have Angel's leaving to compare it to, and it just... doesn't. Riley's going has left a big hole in my life. Angel's going left a big hole in my heart. And only one of them is unfillable.  
  
Which is why I decided I was going to stay away from all men in all possible planes and dimensions for a little while. Including certain exes.  
  
Can one gird one's subconscious?  
  
* * * * *  
  
So no-one was more surprised than me to find myself wandering around Angel's old apartment. Yes, THE apartment, and the less said about that the better because a hell of a lot of my loneliness focuses on this place.  
  
The place was changed. Subtly. I checked the bookcases, and the books were all upside down and sticking out, and not ruler-worthy neat like he likes them. Everywhere was covered in dust, the walls looked grimy, and the furniture looked old (not antique old, because they always looked like that. Dingy old). There was a broken statue on the table by the easy chair; an angel that had once looked up to heaven lay innocuously shattered.  
  
Now, the most observant I may not be. But I've done psych (well, some of psych) and I didn't miss all my English classes in high school. I jumped readily to a conclusion or two: 1. this wasn't my dream, my choice, my place, like usual. It was his. And 2. the symbolism in his unconscious mind was kind of obvious. I remembered he was currently redefining 'rough time'. A broken angel = broken Angel.  
  
Big pieces, though. Fixable.   
  
After a while (I'm not going to tell you how long it seemed, because it makes my conclusion-jumping look moronic), I heard a scrabbling at the door, as if someone had a key but couldn't remember how it worked.  
  
I hurried over and opened the door. Angel stumbled in and I caught him, almost falling myself; strong I may be, but heavy he is. I took a moment while I helped him over to the chair to check him over. The slight differences were here too.  
  
I'm in a really good position to remember, because after the ceremonious taking-down-of-Riley-photos, I went and found Angel's from the place where I hid them after he left, in a weak attempt to test my weakness. I cried properly then; hiding them and finding them.  
  
I remember taking down Angel's pictures savagely, with a passion I wasn't sure was love or hate, but determined to rip them up, or burn them, or throw them away so I would never have to see his face, never have to remember, ever again... and then being unable to do anything but stare, and gently touch his face, and cry.   
  
Riley's pictures I took down absently, after a quick mental debate of whether to leave one or two up which the voice of bitterness won. All I remember thinking is 'hey, I'll have to keep this one. Will looks really cute in it'.  
  
I perched myself on the arm of the chair I'd dumped Angel into and reached out to stroke his hair tentatively. He hadn't moved, but he jumped when I came close. I tried again, slowly, as if I was trying to touch a wild, nervous animal and eventually he let me rest my fingers on his head. He closed his eyes and sat still, leaning back. He looked exhausted.  
  
"You're here, right?" he said quietly after a while.  
  
I paused, then carried on combing my fingers through his hair soothingly. He wasn't wearing gel, which worried me; it's like his only vanity. (Actually, it's a good thing, because his hair looks kind of weird without it).  
  
"You know I am," I said, trying to pitch my voice like his. The air seemed almost thick, tension hanging around and between us. It was like a dream. Well, it is a dream. But generally it's always felt more real than reality. Maybe the difference is him, because the two of us was all that felt real, tangible, now.  
  
I checked over his shoulder and behind me; at some point when I'd been focused completely on him the room had taken on a ghostly, ethereal tinge. Everything was coloured grey except the two of us, and the furniture - the apartment itself - looked blurry around the edges.  
  
"I don't know anything," he said, in a tone that caught me with its absolute desperation. "Where I am, who I am... there's just... darkness."  
  
"You're Angel," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, because this was fairly decent panic material, "out there you fight evil, in here you're with me, and I..." I cut off and swallowed hard.  
  
"Tell me..." he breathed. I could feel his need rise up around us like a black, hungry spirit, and I fought to stop from responding to it.  
  
"I love you," I said.  
  
He reached up, faster than I could stop him, and kissed me, harder than he ever did when we were together, when he was always unfailingly tender. The only time reminiscent of this was... Angelus, kissing me at the school, just after he turned.  
  
But I was kissing him back, matching the violence of his kiss easily, revelling in this one contact more than a hundred soft kisses with Riley... it was like drinking bitter coffee after a year of sugary milk. If you were a big coffee drinker.  
  
Bad metaphor, okay.  
  
Bad thing to be doing, sure.  
  
I pulled away, right away from him, scared at how easily I'd returned his abandonment, how fast the slayer in me had answered his demon, and I was pretty certain those were what was in charge.  
  
He practically shrank back, and that almost horrified me more. To see this big man so confused... I'm usually the one who gets looked after in our relationship, or I was, but now I wanted to wrap him up in cotton wool, shield him and protect him jealously from everything. Mother him - but as a lover, if that makes sense.  
  
I scooted up to him on my knees (God, to have a mind that doesn't live in the gutter), putting one hand on his knee and shaking gently. He looked at me guiltily, and I couldn't stop myself from leaning forward and giving him a gentle, caressing, kiss on the forehead. He breathed out and leaned his head into my lips.  
  
"Probably not a good idea, 'kay?" I said, trying to keep my voice as non-judgemental as possible.  
  
"I'm trying to stay," he said, his voice muffled against my chest as he pulled me into the chair to squash with him. That seemed like comfort, so I let him wrap his arms around my waist and slipped mine around his neck. The contact seemed to calm him.  
  
But strictly in a non-sexual way.  
  
"Stay here?" I said.  
  
"He doesn't want to keep any connections," Angel explained obscurely. "So it's just the hunt."  
  
"You can't live for the hunt," I murmured, talking as much to myself as him.  
  
"What else is there?" he said, sounding a little stronger, more disdainful.  
  
"People," I snapped back, then composed myself, "love. Hope that one day it'll be better. That there's still some decent stuff on TV. I don't know. You have to find your own reasons."  
  
"No reason at all," he muttered, sounding sad, another rapid volte-face. "Just nothing."  
  
There's really nothing to say to him in this sort of a mood. Just hide the stakes, and be around unobtrusively at dawn. Once I might have tried to tease him out of it, or distract him, and he would have smiled, lovingly but wanly and submitted; and no doubt gone straight back into it when I left. Now there didn't seem to be any point - not only would I be leaving, I wasn't really here. Plus I kind of respected his right, and his reasons, to be feeling this way, more than I had then. I respected him too much.  
  
"I want to stay here as long as possible," he said. He sounded sad still, regretful, but stronger. Some of the fighter coming through, though I think that's his major problem; the fighter coming through to the exclusion of the feeling-person. The demon coming through to the exclusion of the man? I hope not.  
  
"Talk to me," he commanded, "give me a focus."  
  
See? Pro-active. That's a good sign.  
  
Probably.  
  
"Okay," I said, "I met my very first troll this week."  
  
"What an experience," he commented, staring at me intently. I shifted slightly, trying to evade his eyes, knowing I was still completely in his eyeline. His gaze made me uncomfortable - like he was stripping me not of clothes but of everything else, like he could see all my thoughts and exactly what I was feeling. Everything that makes me who I am.  
  
Another Angelus thing.  
  
"It was," I said, with a little laugh that seemed to sink into the dull, almost uniformly featureless void around us. Next time I *have* to initiate this - it's weird, but I felt that the room was sapping me of my strength, making me drowsy and slow.  
  
"Anya's ex-boyfriend who she turned into a troll when he cheated on her and then got turned into a vengeance demon because he was such a good troll," I continued. I'm sure Angel couldn't have understood me, but he watched me and hmmed like he did. "Then Willow screwed up a spell and brought him out of this crystal where he'd been trapped and he had himself a little rampage."  
  
"Willow brought Anya's ex out of a crystal?" he said. "It's a small world after all."  
  
"Well, we keep bumping into each other," I said, kind of hoping about a word into the sentence some power would have mercy and stop him hearing me.  
  
"We don't bump, we plan," he said flatly, "and that's because I couldn't stand to even put a state between us."  
  
Damn, he heard. But that is kind of romantic, in a stalkerish way. I felt some of my rejection issues fall away, and I'm not sure why because surely I'd realised what it meant that he'd only run two hours away from me before stopping. Maybe it's just that he's never said it before.  
  
I decided to put that last exchange on virtual rewind and carried on with my dramatic tale.  
  
"He made the Bronze fall on us, then he said Anya and Xander would never work, I kicked his ass and Willow sent him to an alternate universe."  
  
"Are you okay?" he said. I think he was referring to the Bronze part. His eyes swept me again, but I didn't mind this one; it felt almost warm, like a slow caress.  
  
"Fine."  
  
"What about Riley?"  
  
I examined my fingernails. "Still gone."  
  
"But you're coping?"  
  
"Yeah." My tone made it clear this wasn't a subject I wanted to pursue. I mean, come on; even if I had been desperate to unload, Angel wasn't exactly the ideal person to spill to.  
  
"There's probably an alternate universe where we worked out together," he said, apparently just musing out loud.  
  
I couldn't breathe for a second. How the hell does he sound so casual saying that? Even just the thought... it made me want to cry with regret and shout with jealousy and scream with rage. I felt a wave of anger at him. I'm supposed to be the one who's moved on here. But he's the one who can lightly bring up the chance that somewhere there's a couple of us-es being a couple, without even seeming to entertain the thought it could be us, or should be us, and why it isn't us.  
  
"There's probably an alternate universe where Dawn never showed," I snapped, trying to get past his announcement without betraying how affected I was by it, "but not even the Watcher's Council knew why, or who Glory was. Giles went to see them."  
  
"Did he enjoy being in London again?" Angel asked.  
  
"I don't know," I said, surprised at the weirdness of what he focused on.  
  
"I'm sure you don't," he said, confusing me yet more.  
  
"What does that..." I started, then hesitated when he looked up and past me.  
  
"I have to go," he said, and got up, falling fearlessly into the grey without another word.  
  
"Angel!" I called, on reflex... going so suddenly, he probably woke up or something.  
  
(That sounded really strange.)  
  
I woke up late, and I had to fight not to pick up the phone. 


	14. Dreams Are Dreams

I'm sorry this is so late... a severe lack of inspiration and time.  
  
  
  
TITLE: Dreams Are Dreams  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 12  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Joss, who I'm sure knows what he's doing with them. Sigh.  
TIMELINE: After 'Checkpoint' and 'Blood Money'.  
SPOILERS: 'Checkpoint', 'Blood Money'.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy takes the dreaming into her own hands. Figuratively.  
DISTRIBUTION: If you have others then take it, and if you would like them, simply ask and I will slaver delightedly.  
FEEDBACK: To coin a popular Sunnydale phrase - 'duh'.  
RATING: PG-12  
  
  
  
I had this epiphany. I have the power; the power is mine (God, I'm inches away from banners and marching, here). Not in a cheesy superhero-cartoon way - in a way that's about me being my own woman, being in charge, and getting what I want.  
  
Which, right at this moonlit moment, happens to be my stubborn, beautiful, troubled vampire lover.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I even made a whole new place to go. A brightly lit meadow with dappled trees and a babbling brook meandering gently through the centre...  
  
No, I'm kidding. There's not much call for brightly lit in either of our lives. Plus, I'm not even sure what dappling *is*. I created a training room - it wasn't supposed to be quite that, but I guess 'power' doesn't automatically equate with 'skill'. I've controlled this whole dream thing a couple of times now, but I've never actively tried to make a location before, and it's harder than it looks. It ended up as some kind of cross between the main room of the mansion, the library, the back room at the shop, and a graveyard.  
  
I worry about the effect Slaying has had on my associations sometimes. This was a really weird looking room.  
  
Not that Angel seemed to notice, when he finally showed.  
  
I didn't notice at first; I'd been in the dreamscape a good hour, inasmuch as there is time in a place where I'm pretty sure time stretches like a cheerleader before the big game. Given so much empty time - it felt like a luxury, Buffy's Life has been a long round of fullness lately - I didn't have a lot to do, nothing I wanted to think about (negativity made the room shake, and then I felt nauseous), and so I began training. I'm pretty sure that won't make any difference out there, but it might be working on my brain muscles. Practise makes perfect, I'm pretty sure, and I am supposed to be on a strict schedule of rigorous mental and physical exercises: the one recommendation of our old friends the WC that Giles actually agreed with. Go figure.  
  
I did almost ask them if *I* was going to get any retroactive pay. Slaying stops me having any kind of part-time job.  
  
Oh, and school does. Especially now I'm making such a huge impression on my professors.  
  
None of that seems to matter so much here. I don't know why, because I'm still me and I have the same problems and the same thoughts and everything; they just kind of seem to go blurry and distant.  
  
So in the absence of company, I was training with the wide variety of equipment in the room, and may I say I'm proud of how much my subconscious has picked up while I wasn't looking, because I didn't actually know what some of the weaponry around was. Maybe I got a little help here after all.  
  
It didn't take long for me to fall into my usual solo training routine, and even less time after that to fall into a near trance state. Kick, kick, punch, kick, jump... my body knows it, my mind can wander. Giles never lets me do that, he says to get used to losing focus during a fight is asking for trouble - he's right, but then I don't do it during a fight.  
  
Which I proceeded to prove, snapping back to awareness instantly when I felt the first punch land.  
  
I mean, I knew it was Angel - had to be Angel - but fighter's instinct comes above... any other instincts I may or may not have, and I fell smoothly into slaying technique. We sparred for long minutes, without exchanging any words, just the solid sounds of flesh on flesh and low grunting when a hit connected.  
  
It wasn't like when we used to fight together. Angel never gave it less than his all practising with me, but even so there was always a little something he held back - not the strength of the blows. More the intent. Like, he was always trying not to hurt me. He still wasn't really trying to, but he was a little more violent than I was used to.  
  
It was nice to be fighting with him again. I don't fight anyone who I can then sit down and discuss with anymore - well, Giles, those Watchers this week, but they're not up to my standard. There's always some restraint on my part, because I'm stronger than them; I'm stronger than Angel too, but there's no hesitation there because I know he'd rather spend his life aching from me than aching from being without me... okay, he's technically without me now, but not really. Not while I'm alive.  
  
And he's got the whole vampire healing thing going on, so the only permanent damage to worry about is if he falls on a spare stake.  
  
Giles' focus theory proved right: Angel executed a fast snap kick under my attack which was a spilt-second too late. End result? Being flat out on the floor, breathless and panting, with Angel sprawled across me, pinning me down, aiming a stake at my heart.  
  
An actual stake... an actual, physical stake. A ripple of fear ran through me, gazing into his eyes. They looked black - all of him looked dark, silhoutted, blocking out the light from me; and where once there might have been a light, warmth, in his look, in his boyish triuph at having beaten me, he looked detached. Just another fight fought and won.  
  
I wriggled and he grinned and got up in one fluid movement, tossing the stake casually over his shoulder and reaching down to me. I let him pull me up, keeping a wary eye on him. I wasn't sure how he was doing; but I knew that for the past couple of months, he'd been erratic, and I wasn't sure if this was going to be a weepy or a wild turn.  
  
"Nice moves," he said, turning away and picking up a towel that he'd managed to make appear out of nowhere.  
  
Okay. So he's together enough to wilfully affect our environment here.  
  
"You too," I said. Too rattled by trying to predict the direction of his unpredictability, I couldn't fashion my own towel, so I used the other end of his, looking up from wiping my sweaty brow (you'd think *that* wouldn't happen here) to see him staring at me openly and appreciatively.  
  
I blushed. You'd think that wouldn't happen here either.  
  
"How are you?" I said, making a weak attempt to pitch my voice at comforting/sympathetic/non-patronising. Maybe I should have stuck with drama after all.  
  
"Fine," he said, and didn't elaborate, which of course meant he probably wasn't fine.  
  
"You were late?" I said awkwardly. God, can you say 'uphill struggle'?  
  
"I was hunting," he said, sounding surprised.  
  
"It must be like five in the morning," I said in disbelief. And sunrise at... about seven thirty, I think. I've stopped looking up the times of sunset and sunrise; my own body tells me far more reliably when one is imminent.  
  
"I'm getting back on vampire time," he said shortly.  
  
I caught my breath. I can't remember the last time he was on vampire time; probably because I didn't know him then. I do remember a time of vampire time; but not, strictly speaking, *him*. But being on the vampire clock is bad. Most humans can't take it; Cordy certainly wouldn't.  
  
Which means they're still - we're still - losing him. And I'm too busy trying to make sure Dawn doesn't slip away to go stop him from doing the same.  
  
"Tell me one good thing you did this week," I demanded, frantically and irrationally. I want to take back the words practically before I say them, but they're already spilling out... I have so little self-control around him it's almost comic. What the hell do I expect him to say? 'Well, I thought about killing someone, but didn't?' He's not doing good things anymore. I just have a desperate need for reassurance that somehow he's still my angel, my Angel.  
  
I'm always the one erring on the side of selfishness. I should err on the side of right, of sensible; stop seeing him here or go to him there. It's that simple.  
  
Only it's not: I'm too scared to go to him there and too addicted to stop with him here.  
  
I was so busy hitting myself with a mental two-by-four I didn't notice that he actually seemed to be considering the question seriously until he answered.  
  
"Gave $2,500,000 to a homeless teen shelter."  
  
If that two-by-four had been real, I would have just brained myself with it.  
  
"Where the hell did you get that kind of money from?!" I shrieked, trying to remember if I'd read any reports involving L.A, that sum of money, and probably mysterious circumstances.  
  
And then it occurs to me that yes, I did. Something about a law firm, and a charity ball with those people from 'Life Lessons' to raise money for a... homeless teens shelter.  
  
Sense, any time you'd like to drop in on this conversation?  
  
"I robbed from the rich to give to the poor," he said calmly, with an ironic glint in his eye and a cynical smirk on his face.  
  
"Did you now," I breathed.  
  
"Yeah," he said, and he carried on without any promping... not that I was in any state to give that. "I wanted to push Wolfram and Hart a little, so I hired a guy to help and got the woman who ran it in."  
  
Wolfram and Hart I recognised as the law firm involved, but clarity still failed to descend. I completely didn't feel like I was talking to Angel; which I've thought before this, but those times it may not have felt like him but it felt like something benign. Something decent. This Angel felt like a stranger. Angel never really felt like a stranger to me, even when he was.  
  
"How much did the guy get?" I said, wondering what the hell I was saying.  
  
Angel hesitated. "Actually, I had to kill him."  
  
Speechless. This guy was probably underworld, possibly demonic. But to hire someone and then kill them... it's not done. And it's not done because it's not- well, *nice*.  
  
"It was pretty much a him or me kind of situation," he said, and I heard the note of entreaty but didn't feel minded to acknowledge it just then.  
  
"It was an old grudge, he let it go while we were working together and then he had to..."  
  
"So you played him," I interrupted.  
  
Another hesitation. "Yes."  
  
"What about the woman?" I said through gritted teeth.  
  
He sighed. "I played her. But I gave her more of the money than Wolfram and Hart-"  
  
"Why are you so obsessed with this firm?" I said, noticing for the first time the vicious note his voice took on with that word.  
  
"They made some things difficult for me last year... and they brought Darla back... and took her back." His tone almost wavered before it became flat.  
  
I suppose I could take some comfort in this not just being random. I guess he's got a right to some vengeance for that... but then isn't this the man who told me I couldn't have mine over Faith? There's no comfort here.  
  
"Why, what goodness have you precipitated lately?" he asked me with a barely concealed undertone of hostility and defensiveness.  
  
"Kicked some Watchers' asses," I offered lamely, only half with him.  
  
"The Watcher's Council is back?" he said in amazement. "They don't learn."  
  
"They brought information on Glory," I told him, "just made me work for it."  
  
"Work for it?" he said in a voice that said he wasn't really bothered, but while he was there he might as well listen.  
  
"Physical tests, interviewing the gang," I said, ticking off on my fingers. I realised he wasn't listening, but the week kind of felt like a blur, and I really needed to go through for someone. And it wasn't like he was eager to share through his issues.  
  
"And Glory is an insane god who came to see me, I had to leave Dawn and Mom with *Spike*, Glory has competitors for the Key but not in a sense that they want to snuggle up either, and I made a really good speech to the Watchers and they had to leave," I finished. Wow. I had a bigger week than I thought.  
  
"You left your family with Spike?!" Angel said, shocked.  
  
Okay, *that's* what he picks up on?  
  
"This was not the most important point in there, Angel," I said, annoyed. "Did you catch the 'Glory's a god' part?"  
  
"Dess."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"Goddess... if she's a she then she's technically a..."  
  
"Shut up!" Are some priorities really too much to ask?  
  
"You're okay, right?" he said pragmatically.  
  
"Yeah," I said, puzzled. This conversation was just going places I seemed to have no input in taking it.  
  
"So you're doing okay," he pointed out.  
  
"Maybe in the grand scheme of things..." I said.  
  
"Ah!" he said, walking up to me, displaying the most passion he had yet. "But there is no grand scheme. If there's any scheme at all, it's not grand."  
  
"Maybe it's not being great to you right now..."  
  
"It never has been great to me," he said precisely, "or you. Why do you fight at all, Buffy?"  
  
"Because there's things worth fighting for," I told him, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at me. His dark eyes pierced mine, hard and unforgiving. "You told me that."  
  
He reached up and gently took my hand in his, away from his face. He kissed the back of my hand softly, making me shiver and stare at him in confusion.  
  
He leaned close to me and my eyes slid closed, but the kiss I expected never came. I felt a stirring of cool, unnecessary breath on my cheek and then suddenly he licked up to my temple, his tongue rough and oddly warm against my skin.  
  
"I was wrong," he whispered.  
  
An abrupt, small push from him sent me tumbling out of the dreamscape and into That Buffy... the one who's kind of wondering how much she really needs sleep. 


	15. Dream To Me

TITLE: Dream To Me  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 13  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Drone, drone, drone.  
TIMELINE: After 'Blood Ties' and 'Happy Anniversary'.  
SPOILERS: Well, yeah.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy. Angel. Dream. Chitchat.  
DISTRIBUTION: If you would like it, just ask.  
FEEDBACK: It'd be nice g.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
Call me selfish, call me unfeeling, call me a big lump of heartless insensitivity.  
  
Call me a scared Slayer facing an unbeatable god(dess) who's after her bewildered not-really-related-but-real sister.  
  
Obviously, I assume Angel is still going through stuff. But as of a few days ago, I really am as well, and if he won't share? He can damn well indulge me while I do. I need someone... out of it. Someone who didn't live the past couple of days here.  
  
Apart from the part where he didn't send a card, again... it still hurt when he didn't. Less than last year, when I cried for half an hour then dried off and went to meet Riley, who also failed to send a card this year. That didn't get to me as much - he only saw in one, after all.  
  
I'm pretty sure Angel won't have forgotten the date.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Due, I guess, to my extreme reluctance to leave Dawn, the dream manifested itself - again - in my house. It's kind of like being a mother, only with the potential for bloodletting and violence.  
  
Though my mom does always get this glint in her eye when she's doing the food shopping.  
  
There was quite a lot of the 'bloodletting and violence' part in the last couple of days; but what I told Dawn was true. *Our* blood is the same. It really cemented for me that yeah, she's here, and she may not have always been, but now, she's real. She's human.  
  
Probably if either of us have weird blood, it's me.  
  
When we left the hospital tonight, we came straight home and just sat silently, the three of us, as a family. And then we hugged warmly, and we all came upstairs to our separate beds. I got up for a glass of water a couple of hours ago, and I could hear Dawn crying, really softly. I thought about going in, but what could I say? This is something she has to learn to deal with, and if not that then at least come to terms with. I want to help her - I will help her. And eventually she will accept it. She is going to be okay. But I remember from when I was Called; she's got something nobody can tell her how to feel about, and it's going to take her a little while to figure it out for herself.  
  
I really hope she doesn't take as long as me, which was pretty much years.   
  
Or maybe she's just mad with herself for burning all her journals.  
  
Anyway, I figured the dream would be pretty easy because what with all the Buffy-birthday and blood and silence and crying, Angel was floating around in my head. Of course, I don't know how long it actually took, in terms of how long I was asleep, but I know it takes you a while to get into that state of sleep and... it really doesn't matter.  
  
Angel never spent a lot of time in my living room. It doesn't have easy outside access. Well, there's the front door. But 'front door' would usually have meant 'mom knowing', and so it was always simpler to just have him come in the window and bribe Dawn. It wasn't like it was a problem for him, and he never minded, or never told me if he did; he actually seemed to prefer it. After Mom knew everything, she wasn't always so keen on having him in the house; obviously there were no getting-to-know-all-about-you dinners. I wonder if he ever minded that?  
  
Despite not being (not having been) a regular fixture, he looked pretty comfortable in my dream-living room, which was a darn good rendition. Except I changed the carpet colour slightly, because I've never liked that rug. He looked pretty good being pretty comfortable. We *should* have had him over.  
  
Not just because he goes with the furniture.  
  
Apart from the couch, which he was sitting on and looked sort of too big for.  
  
"I have a problem," I announced, striding through from the hall and planting myself on a chair opposite him.  
  
"Old age?" he said, openly staring at my legs, which I admit were quite on display. I appeared to be dressed in what I would have been wearing if this was real, and I'd just come down to talk to him. From being in bed. No woman wears decent stuff in bed though, do they? Not when they're sleeping alone. I had on the old t-shirt that I *actually* put on tonight to sleep in, which I really, really hoped he didn't realise was one of his.  
  
But that wasn't the main insult.  
  
"I am not old!" I spluttered. "Haven't you got any manners?"  
  
"I'm trying not to," he said agreeably.  
  
"I'm..."  
  
"Twenty years old, yes." His voice changed subtly, going from mocking to caressing. "Happy birthday, Buffy."  
  
"Thank you," I bit off, suddenly mad that he thought a few words somehow replaced his presence. "How sad that it slipped your mind in time to send a card."  
  
"*Nothing* about you has slipped my mind," he shot back. "All or nothing was the deal, Buffy. I'm not going to be some guy you send Christmas cards to in ten years with a letter on how the family are doing."  
  
"Whose deal?" I asked him through gritted teeth, absurdly feeling like I should be quiet so I didn't wake Dawn or Mom up. An angst-filled Our Relationship conversation is just what I don't need right now. Or ever, really. But especially right now.  
  
"I don't know," he said calmly, "but we never got in there to cut it."  
  
"This metaphor is losing me," I snapped, "what are you talking about?"  
  
"My stuff," he said dismissively.  
  
I'm curious. And a little worried. But hey, lead-in for my stuff.  
  
"Want a quick version of that letter on how the family are doing?" I said, making it clear that he would hear it whether he wanted to or not.  
  
He sighed and leaned his head back onto the couch, closing his eyes. His face all smoothed out for a minute, and he looked so much younger without all that tension. I didn't even realise you could *show* tension in your face, but it's definitely there on him. Making its mark.   
  
Vampires don't change, but somehow he looks different every time I see him.  
  
"Dawn knows what she is," I said, unsure whther he was listening or not.  
  
"What? How?" Listening.  
  
I heaved my own sigh. "Spike showed her," I admitted reluctantly. His expression closed off, became thunderous, and he'd opened his mouth to speak, but I stopped with him, holding up my hand to forstall the explosion.   
  
"She read some of Giles' notes. It wasn't his fault. I should have told her."  
  
"Who told you that? Spike?" he asked derisively.  
  
"Yeah," I said, affronted.  
  
"It didn't occur to you he was spinning a line to save his own ass? You had your reasons for not telling Dawn."  
  
"I know I did," I snapped back, annoyed by the insinuation that I couldn't tell the difference between Spike making a point and Spike mouthing off. I don't like him, but he's more perceptive than Angel gives him credit for.  
  
That whole 'you'll never be friends' speech, as a for instance. He was right; it's not brains, it is blood, and I'm going to be in love with Angel 'til I die.  
  
"And my reasons weren't right. She had a right to know what was going on. The guys had a right to know what they were protecting." I still wasn't entirely sure I hadn't done the right thing keeping it a secret, but... I probably should have told them before now. Glory didn't know about my friends.  
  
Of course, now that they know, she does. The only unfailing universal constant in my life; Murphy's Law.  
  
"How did she take it?" Angel asked. I'm still not even sure whether Angel remembers her... obviously, here. But he may not even remember *any* of the dreams when he wakes up. Maybe Cordelia is a better example.  
  
"She wasn't delighted," I answered, curling up in my seat. "Freaked out at first. Ran away. But she's back and we're working it out."  
  
"Do you think she'll be okay?" he said, regarding me solemnly.  
  
I started at the carpet for a moment. "I think she will." I looked up, met his gaze and gave him a fleeting smile, "She's a Summers gal."  
  
He graced me with the ghost of a smile himself. "Made of tough stuff."  
  
"We are," I agreed. Summers women are, at any rate, far better than the Summers men.  
  
Though a lot of things are better than the Summers men. I'm suddenly so glad those monks decided to send her to me as... well, *her*.  
  
"What about Glory?" he said.  
  
Yeah, fine. Bring me down.  
  
"She still doesn't know Dawn's the Key," I said brightly.  
  
"But apart from that she's still an really tough, possibly lunatic goddess who eats people's sanity, who you can't beat?" he surmised, more or less correctly. He didn't mention she's in no way prettier than me.  
  
"Yes," I said without losing any of my cheer-ready pep. "Maybe you should visit. We can starve her out."  
  
"I've been sent mad by a singing green demon who drives badly," he complained, segueing from me without even seeming to hear my comment.  
  
"Well, if you will go to these bars..." I said, joking.  
  
"Kareoke bars are demon spawned," he said randomly. "That's why all the demons go there."  
  
"Demons don't usually sing kareoke," I pointed out to him.  
  
"This one does," he said mournfully. "Then he can see into people's souls. When they sing. He owns a bar."  
  
"Have... have you sung?" I asked, biting my lip so I didn't laugh.  
  
"Yes. Badly," he said, slouching down into the plush seats of the couch.  
  
I can imagine. God. How scary.  
  
"Not for a while though," he said. "But he pretty much proved to me he doesn't always need the singing."  
  
"What's he seen in your soul?" I asked, becoming serious. Angel's soul is very important to me, and that's completely not as trite as it sounded.  
  
"Different things," he said. "And beige."  
  
"Beige," I repeated. "Like, the colour beige?"  
  
"There's no other meaning for beige, Buffy," he reprimanded gently.  
  
"But that doesn't mean anything," I protested.  
  
"I don't know," he said. "I found it annoying at the time. He'd woken me up to find some grad student he thought was going to end the world."  
  
"Oh," I said. We get so many apocalypse warnings here, it never really registers that other reasons might wind up being the End Of The World. I wonder how many near-misses there are? On, I don't know, a yearly basis. And none of them work. Makes you think about the laws of averages. Statistically, I imagine we're nearly up.  
  
These dreams are never positive anymore.  
  
"And I assume he didn't..." I ventured, ready to catalogue for my mental list of Ways the World Could End. It's not that I think it'll be useful exactly... just interesting. Maybe if it gets really long, eventually I can publish it. As humour, obviously.  
  
"No. Wasn't even trying to, in the end," Angel said, with a faint hint of disgust, "he figured out how to stop time and decided to stop his girlfriend leaving him. Some people have no vision."  
  
I could tell he was half-joking - personal armageddons are one of his touchy subjects, for obvious reasons - but that really irritated me. From where I am right at this point in time, that doesn't seem like such a bad use of a machine.  
  
"But doing it because you just fancy the end of the world is a good reason?" I said. "It was yours."   
  
Cruel, I'm aware. God, I'm aware, and usually I wouldn't say *anything* like that to him. He's not responsible for the demon choosing to try. He feels it, but I don't think it, and he doesn't deserve my or anyone's blame. His normal reaction to that would be guilty-Angel; quiet, pulled into himself, unable to meet my eyes - and a little I-can't-believe-you-just-said-that-to-me, all wounded confusion and irresistible puppy-dog eyes. With his eyes, he's already halfway there.  
  
But he's also halfway to implacable, emotionless, nothing-showing Angel, which was pretty much what I got. Hardly any reaction to something that should have made him at least flinch.  
  
He wouldn't have minded all that much if the world had ended.  
  
I thought I'd met Angel scary, but to see him, someone who's so... he's big-hearted. Kind, and loving and generous, and it's really awful to see it just all pushed away from the core of who he is.  
  
"It was their anniversary," he told me. A little bit of unsolicited information about the would-be world-ender, I think.  
  
"Yeah?" I said, "what did they do?"  
  
"Split up," he said tonelessly. "He said she said she thought he was hollow."  
  
"She told him he was hollow?" I said, interested despite myself. That's a bad break-up.  
  
"He heard her telling someone."  
  
Less interesting. "Oh."  
  
This is all I ever say around him.  
  
"It'd be pretty good to be hollow," Angel said wistfully.  
  
"Like, literally?" I said. I saw that film. It wasn't good. The film, not the idea. Well, both, really.  
  
"No," he snapped. "Emotionally. Like you've felt such depths of emotion and it's just deadened you so you don't feel anything else."  
  
"I think it'd be lonely," I said, watching him carefully. The conversation had lost its irreverent edge somewhere and he'd started actually *talking* to me. I understand he's tired of always feeling beaten right now, but he can't want to feel this numb forever... not feel broody, or happy when he gets a case, and I'm getting so movie of the week, but doesn't he love anymore? Want to love? Want me?  
  
"It doesn't matter," he said, staring straight ahead. "Never happens."  
  
Hmm. Good, I suppose.  
  
He got up to leave, like he was a real house guest or something, and like a real hostess I got up to see him out.  
  
Habit is so strange.  
  
At the door we paused, probably realising the weirdness of the little meaningless ritual we were about to act out, and silently, mutually decided to drop it.  
  
Before he opened the door, I tangled a hand in the collar of his shirt and pulled his face down to mine. We kissed softly for moments, and then I pulled away.  
  
"Did you feel that?"  
  
He smiled - maybe the first genuine smile all night - and said, "Yeah. Always." He leaned in and kissed me again, a light brush on my forehead, and then we turned away from each other.  
  
I began to make my way upstairs, feeling him lingering behind me.  
  
"Oh, and Buffy?"  
  
I turned around the stairs and looked at him leaning on the side of the doorway. Cold air blew in and up to me. When he went outside, what would happen? Walk off into the distance, coat flapping? Big black dream car running on perma-full dream tank?   
  
"The shirt looks better on you anyway." He didn't wait for a response, just disappeared out the door.  
  
And I do mean disappeared.  
  
Is this a symbol of how we're in a dream, or of how he's falling in real life, or of how I need to stop looking for meaning where there isn't any? 


	16. How Long Must I Dream

TITLE: How Long Must I Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 14  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Think about it for a minute.  
TIMELINE: After 'Crush' and 'The Thin Dead Line'.  
SPOILERS: Beware season 5 spoilers ahead.  
SYNOPSIS: Angel and Buffy share yet another dream.  
FEEDBACK: Well, that would depend on whether you want to see more of this series g.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
Hi Angel. So, guess what Spike told me...  
  
Hi Angel. Turns out there must be something in the blood that makes your line go for Slayers...  
  
Hi Angel. Saw Dru again, but Spike offered to...  
  
Hi Angel. Had another adventure with chains...  
  
Hi Angel. Has Spike always been like this or...  
  
Hi Angel.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I just didn't think that Angel would welcome the news that the one of his progeny he really hates (and vice-versa, if past torture is anything to go by) has fallen in - God, I can barely think it - *love* with the... what am I? Former girlfriend? Ex-lover? Estranged love of life?  
  
Well. Me. And despite that Angel getting mad and coming and dusting Spike currently seems a very attractive prospect, on the grounds that then I won't have to do it, I have my reasons for not wanting to mention it just yet.  
  
I did tell Spike to go away. Firmly. Okay, probably won't have been successful, but he might at least keep his distance for a while.  
  
Part of me thinks that there is something icky about dusting someone I know while helpless. With Angel's current state, he'd probably have fewer compunctions about that, but I wouldn't quite feel comfortable. This could change.  
  
Repulsive as I find the notion, Dawn seems to find some sort of comfort in him. He hasn't tried to hurt her (my mind adds 'yet') and maybe soon she'll need that.   
  
How do I explain it to the gang? 'Yeah, Angel knew about Spike through... osmosis. No? Okay, I've been sharing dreams with him and not telling any of you for about five, six months now, but don't worry about it.' I think not.  
  
And, I'm scared maybe he won't care. That maybe I'll go 'Spike, yeah, he's in love with me' and it just won't matter to him. He did tell me to move on, and though I'm pretty sure he meant 'to alive people', he might not mind.  
  
I don't want to hear that. Selfish as it is, I want it to upset him for me to be with somebody. I want him to hate the thought that I'm finding - making - a home in someone else's arms as much as I still hate the thought that he might be.  
  
So... silence on that particular can o' worms. I'll tell him about the paper I failed to hand in or something. No doubt he'll have some gloom to share. I comfort myself with the thought that if it gets really bad he'll call, or write, or something... and then I see him and think 'but he hasn't'.  
  
I don't even want to think that we haven't, he hasn't, hit rock bottom yet. How much lower is it possible to get?  
  
* * * * *  
  
I kind of wanted to show him the New and Improved Bronze, and he must still be completely disinterested, because that's where we were. I quite impressed myself with the quality of the surroundings, actually; I'vce only been there that once, but I registered a lot of detail. I expected it to be lost on Angel (not just because depression: because hey, guy) but I liked feeling that he was being kept up-to-date with the Buffyverse.  
  
I guess that's what this whole thing is about; it certainly can't be for the purposes of giving us both a boost anymore. He's worse every time he shows up.  
  
Tonight I was shooting some pool and he joined in the game, which was a surprise because I didn't even know he *could* play pool.  
  
We didn't speak in the time it took for him to win, which actually wasn't very long; my proficiency with long, wooden sticks lies in other areas.  
  
"How are you?" I said eventually, studiously chalking my cue and not looking at him.  
  
"Lonely," he said briefly.  
  
Could that have been some honest vulnerability? Knowing I was probably the only person currently seeing this side of him - possibly the only one who cared who knew it wasn't completely buried - gave me a smug feeling of power... childish, not something I was particularly proud of, but real nontheless. But with power comes responsibility (the world according to Spiderman). I work with that every day of my life; the power of the Slayer, and the duty to the world. And now it's the power of the woman, and the responsibility to the guy I love.  
  
It balances, in a weird way. It's why it was a 'no' to Spike (along with the just NO), and really a 'no' to Riley, and probably to any other prospective date; I can't take on that responsibility to another man, another relationship, while I'm still feeling it to Angel. And I'm not prepared to let that slide.  
  
"Scariest thing there is," I quoted at him, wondering if he remembered that conversation. I mean, I did, but then I haven't forgotten many of our conversations. He really isn't a big talker, but what he says is always right on the ball... I learnt early it was smart to pay attention, because his pearls of wisdom shone bright. (That's a pretty good phrase. Maybe not so much if you consider what pearls are made of, though. Well... something good and beautiful out of a little piece of crap... I guess it could work as a metaphor for Angel's life, where he gets that wisdom *from*).  
  
He shot me a quick smile; he remembers.  
  
"It really is," he agreed.  
  
"Something brought this on?" I asked, leaning over the table and lining up my shot.  
  
"My informer skipped town," he said. "Can you believe that? I'm bothered about some demon leaving because it's practically the only contact I have."  
  
Not such an unusual situation. He didn't have a whole lot of contact while he lived here, either. I think there was pretty much me and... me. Occasionally assorted bits of Scooby gang.  
  
"That's it?" I said doubtfully. I didn't want to say, but that is kind of pathetic.  
  
He heaved a sigh from dead lungs.  
  
"I saw Cordy..." he started reluctantly.  
  
"And?" I persisted. If she's done anything to him...  
  
"She said I should stay away from them," he said, staring with great concentration at the pool table.  
  
How insensitive? If I admit it, knowing Cordelia has been in LA with Angel has actually been a comfort this past year, until this whole thing blew up. Whatever I may think about her, she does have hidden (very hidden) depths and she wasn't - always - such a bad girlfriend to Xander. From what Angel used to tell me here I know she's been supportive to him. Then bam, he makes a couple of, okay quite large, mistakes and she's nowhere?  
  
No doubt she's got her reasons, feels justified, whatever. But all I care about is him.  
  
However, Angel doesn't need to hear any of that; just that I'm still here.  
  
"When did you see her?" I probed gently, trying to gauge whether he seriously didn't want to get into it or needed to.  
  
"In the hospital. Wesley got shot by a zombie policeman." He waved a hand, dismissing the zombie policemen, which was okay because I know from zombies and details weren't necessary, or too interesting, probably. "I'd been watching them for a while, actually."  
  
"Why?" I said.  
  
"Something Merl - the demon informant - said," Angel told me, "and with what the host said... I wanted to check they were okay."  
  
"Are they?" I said.  
  
"Fine," he said. "They don't need me, remember?"  
  
"She probably didn't mean it," I offered quietly. I know pretty well how, and why, you push people away when you need them.  
  
"She meant it," he said. "It... kind of hit me, you know? I should have kept avoiding them. I was okay when I didn't..."  
  
"Know they were carrying on without you?" I said sympathetically.  
  
"Yeah," he said. "We were... we were family. And when I saw them all at the hospital - *they* were family."  
  
I was silent. I still wasn't happy with Cordelia, but he did turn them away for the purpose of not having connections...  
  
Unfortunately, he read my silence correctly.  
  
"You think I'm getting what I deserve."  
  
"No," I said slowly. "I think her reaction was understandable for your... illadvised but also understandable actions."  
  
"It amounts to the same thing," he pointed out stoically. I could almost feel him pulling in on himself, wary of the censure I hadn't meant to give.  
  
"Not exactly," I said. I came around the side of the table to rest my hand on top of his, clenched on the smooth green felt. "I'm on your side, Angel. Always. You know that."  
  
His gaze met mine, and the calm resolve had fallen away from the depths of his eyes, replaced by a heartbreaking little-boy-lost confusion.  
  
Identity crisis. Maybe it's because I've had so many of them that suddenly people with them are gravitating to me: Dawn. Angel. Spike.  
  
"I screwed up, didn't I?" he said, straightening his hand out and lacing his fingers with mine.  
  
"You did," I said, safe in the knowledge I wasn't telling him anything he didn't know. "But they did too. Doesn't mean you can't fix it."  
  
He shook his head. "I can't."  
  
"You won't," I said.  
  
"I still have things to do," he said steadfastly. This translates to 'vamps to dust and a law firm to screw over.'  
  
I don't agree with him, but what can I do? He's two hundred and forty seven years old. If you can't be left to screw up at that age, when can you?  
  
"If any of it involves Dru I wouldn't hold your breath," I advised. Well, actually he could hold his breath, seeing as how he doesn't in fact need to breathe.  
  
"What do you mean?" he said.  
  
"She paid Sunnydale a visit," I informed him. "She wasn't good enough to leave a copy of her itinerary, but I don't know that she'll be coming back to LA."  
  
"Are you okay?" he said, looking me over anxiously, as if any injuries I might have gotten would suddenly manifest themselves.  
  
"I'm fine," I assured him.  
  
"Was she good enough to take Spike?" he asked.  
  
No no no, bad subject.  
  
"No," I said simply. What with him being in love with me and all...  
  
"I did uninvite him from my house," I said.  
  
"About time," Angel muttered. "You should have done that over two years ago."  
  
"My mom kind of likes him," I offered weakly.  
  
Angel politely refrained from making any comment on that, but I could tell he wanted to. He's entitled, really; my mother tolerates an evil vampire who'd be killing if he could, but doesn't like him. Of course, this is mostly because of the whole Angelus thing. I guess I could have explained our situation better. Something along the lines of 'well, I love him anyway'; I don't think I've ever talked about Angel and me to her at all. Even when we split up. She provided some ice-cream, though.  
  
"You should just stake him," Angel said darkly. "It's not like you wouldn't be justified."  
  
"I just feel weird about staking something that can't fight back," I said. Moving swiftly on...  
  
Angel didn't say anything, just took a shot in the neglected game. The cue ball bounced off the table and smashed on the floor. Must have been some power behind that shot.  
  
"At least we won't have to pay for that," I said, staring at the powdered remains of the ball.  
  
"Considering it's not real," he said.  
  
He laid his cue down on the table and said, "I've got to go."  
  
"Why?" I said. "It's not like you have anyone to get back to."  
  
"It's time," he said, giving me a reproachful glance. Open mouth, insert foot.  
  
He hesitated before me and then instinctively, simultaneously, we moved into each others' arms. He hugged me tightly enough for it to momentarily hurt strong Slayer bones, pressing his face into my hair. Being weak, just for a moment, as I held him to me and let him. Then he stepped back, out of my arms and into reality.  
  
Spike's embrace may be that cold... but they could never hold that warmth for me. 


	17. Though Your Dreams Be Tossed And Blown

TITLE: Though Your Dreams Be Tossed And Blown  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 15  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: The characters aren't mine. They're Joss'. Possibly with a nod to Marti, now, *cough*Godhelpusall*cough*.  
TIMELINE: Pay attention, this is important. Because of the cliff-hangery endings of the shows, both of which I assume will flow straight into the next episode, this part is set during the eps rather than after. Buffy is napping after calling Ben to cancel, and Angel is dreaming after the sex and before the rude awakening. I expect the times don't match up, but it also gives me a neat explanation for why she finds out what's going on and doesn't even call.  
SPOILERS: 'I Was Made To Love You', 'Reprise'.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel share more dreaminess. Follows the rest of the series, whch is at my site http://www.geocities.com/hold_my_soul/index.html which I am plugging because I've just done it all up.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The title of this part comes from a line in the very lovely 'You'll Never Walk Alone' which I think is quite appropriate for both their situations right now.  
FEEDBACK: Would be loved and appreciated! This series is starting to stress me out.  
RATING: PG-12 for language.  
  
  
  
  
I have (finally) come to the crucial self-realisation that I am a Complete Person without A Man. I don't need Riley. I certainly don't need Spike. I don't need Ben. I don't need any other random dates. I don't need Angel.  
  
I just... want him.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I don't remember an awful lot about dying; or at least, my mind has blocked it out. Of course, I know there's a hell or six thousand, so it makes sense that there's a heaven. Or I just hope there's a heaven. Whatever: I don't remember visiting, no lights at the end of tunnels, no Celia and/or Grandma Beryl to meet me, no choirs of angels or anything. Just nothing. Black silence, like really late at night when you close your eyes and float halfway between being asleep and awake.  
  
Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.  
  
Which is why it's so scary to contemplate that Angel is.  
  
I could feel myself walking - making the movements of walking - but I couldn't see what I was walking on, if I was in fact walking on anything.  
  
The moment I thought that, I was falling... feeling myself fall but without the points of reference you usually use, the scenery passing by... the landing.  
  
Only where was there to land? You could fall forever, here.  
  
They say if you have a dream of falling, the shock when you land stops your physical heart.  
  
I don't know *who* exactly says it, but right then, where I was, it seemed a frighteningly plausible possibility.  
  
Fall for long enough, and it gets to be kind of a good feeling. Adrenaline rush, I guess... the reason people bungee jump, or jump out of planes with only a flimsy parachute pack between them and certain death. I don't really get that mentality; it's so easy for things to go wrong, just for twenty, thirty, forty seconds on a high. When I go Slaying, I get some of that high. Maybe even more of it. I try my damndest to make sure things don't go wrong. I assume they all do, too.  
  
But it doesn't always work, and sometimes there's no safety cord to pull.  
  
Just the unforgiving darkness.  
  
And a hard, painful bump as I connected with some kind of surface.  
  
I felt rather than heard the footsteps, coming from far away: measured, heavy, relentless. And as they became louder, each careful step was answered by, and then synchronised with, a pounding thump, beating hard and unstoppable against my temples. I raised one hand muzzily to my head, propping myself up on the other and hissing at a burning in my ribs, distractedly noting that despite the insidious dark that surrounded and bathed me, I could see myself fine. My hand almost glowed as I gingerly touched my head.  
  
I didn't register right away when the footsteps silenced, because it took a moment longer for the guy with the little hammers inside my head to get the message. Then it was gone, as quickly and inexplicably as it had arrived.  
  
I sensed rather than heard or saw the presence behind me, and I took a minute to feel tentatively out. I'd expected Angel. And it was Angel. A roiling mixture of confusion, desperation and desolation that made me nauseous just to experience for a second, from the outside.  
  
When I turned, slowly and almost fearfully, none of it was reflected in his demeanour, or - I squinted, because he wasn't glowing the same way I was - his eyes, which stared down at me... not without recognition, he knew who I was... more with a lack of desire to *see* me.  
  
Worse than I've ever seen him, here or there... worse, in a completely different way, than even Angelus, because while I hated that cold mocking always in his gaze then, it was almost okay because it was *supposed* to be there. It made it easier to separate him from my Angel. This *was* my Angel, empty and sad, and I didn't know what I could do but send a quick, fervent prayer up to the Power that had saved him once, praying that this would be the worst. He looked ready to fold.  
  
For the first time I could remember, I felt less than safe with him. Obviously discounting the demon-days... even that first time, when he was following me, I didn't really get a threat vibe off him. It just wasn't there. Even that nearly-last time, when he hit me, I still knew if I needed it, he'd take me into the safety of his arms and his protection. Now my Slayer senses screamed at being in a vulnerable position, sprawled at his feet, and I scrambled up, ungainly with disorientation.  
  
It didn't help as much as it might have if he wasn't still about a foot taller than I am, but I felt more secure, as my gaze met his and my soul wailed for his; cheesy pseudo-romance words I shudder to say just to myself, but I felt it, I did... a slow, unconscious reaching from me, from my essence, to him, and a soft cry of despair and abandonment at the firm, brick-wall denial.  
  
His gaze slid away.  
  
I meant to say 'hi'. Or 'how are you', despite knowing however he was, it was bad. Something normal, anyway.  
  
I guess his name is normal... but not the way I said it, questioning and breathy and little-girl-lost and demanding and with a throaty hint of tears.  
  
"Buffy," he replied, in a manner that was clearly meant to be echoing, mocking, but lacked any kind of heart or interest.  
  
"What's wrong with you?" I demanded, regaining some stridency.  
  
"What's been wrong with me for the last few months?" he flipped back. "Pay attention, Slayer."  
  
Okay. Cryptic Guy has always been annoying. But there's always been a James-Bond-cum-Milk-Tray-Man aspect to it that makes it kind of sexy, or at least bearable.  
  
But this so completely wasn't the time. I felt my hand ball up into an involuntary fist, almopst able to feel his smooth skin under my knuckles. I curbed the impulse, with some effort; it's at least partly a Slayer/vampire thing, but it's not conducive to a healthy relationship. I settled for gritting my teeth.  
  
"Darla," I bit out through the aforementioned gritted teeth. My jaw was starting to hurt.  
  
"Yeah," he said. He wasn't looking at me, so it was hard to catch the quick downwards flick of his eyes, but it was there.  
  
"What happened?" I said, stepping closer towards him.  
  
I think I knew, on some level. Maybe I always knew what it would come to, this - thing with him and her.  
  
"I had sex with her," he blurted. He met my gaze briefly, haunted and hooded and again with the familiar trace of guilt and plea for absolution.  
  
"Why are you telling me this?" I said. My voice sounded eerily calm and slow.  
  
I felt like a wronged wife confronting her husband with proof of his infidelity, forcing him into a quick, hunted admittance of guilt. I haven't been with Angel for over eighteen months, but that he was sleeping with someone else... still had this effect on me.  
  
Is this how he felt, when I threw Riley in his face? If he did, then my objective - hurt Angel - worked. It's not even that he slept with another woman (kissed another woman, had his hands on another woman's body, called another woman's name), or that he slept with *Darla* (although hey! What the hell?). It's that we couldn't, and can't, and maybe if we could it would never have even come up, because he'd still be here with me.  
  
It wasn't all of it, I know. But it was part of it. Because of his terror of becoming...  
  
Oh God.  
  
"Is it because I've got to be expecting a visit from Angelus soon? Is that why you're telling me" I said, my voice betraying me with a tremor. I can't survive Angelus again.  
  
He didn't say anything, just stared at me guiltily.  
  
"Is it?" I screamed, losing control in a rush. "Am I going to be killing you again?"  
  
I knew without a doubt that this, what, who, I was raging at was the soul. Angel's soul meets me here. But if my understanding of the ether realms is right, it's entirely possible for him to have come from there.  
  
Do not pass consciousness. Do not collect another day's worth of 'life'.  
  
"Maybe you should either way," he muttered almost inaudibly.  
  
That pierced the haze of panic that was filling my head. It's a luxury I don't really get in my life, panic. It's 'badness, react'; not much time to consider. Probably a good thing.  
  
It pierced the haze and moved straight down to my right hand, barely passing more than primitive synapses.  
  
I almost wouldn't have realised I'd done it, but Angel grimaced and raised a hand to touch the mark where I'd slapped him. It came up red, betraying the power behind my blow.  
  
And that he'd fed recently.   
  
On *her*.  
  
I got right in his face, past 'furious' and into the clear, rational area beyond. "*Never* say anything like that to me," I hissed, holding his gaze in my burning one. "It's hard enough to kill *him*. I *won't* kill you."  
  
No matter how blurred the difference between them gets.  
  
"If you want to die," I continued, "fine. But *don't* ask me to do it for you."  
  
Obviously, I didn't mean fine in the sense of yeah, go ahead... but I've felt like that myself. And that woke me up to thinking, for a moment, about why he slept with her.  
  
I asked, my hard tone daring him to not answer.  
  
"What does it matter?" he asked, his voice matching mine for harshness. "What does it have to do with you? What, you can fuck whoever you want but I have to stay alone?"  
  
I stared at him, momentarily lost for words. Surprisingly, it wasn't the Angelus-esque taunt, the leering insinuation, that even bothered me the most (though I figured when I had time to process a little more, I probably wouldn't be delighted); it was him asking what it has to do with me.  
  
It's having to do with him. And that means it's having to do with me. Doesn't he know that?  
  
"You don't have to stay alone," I said. "I haven't. I haven't fucked everyone, but I haven't been alone." Oh, yeah. There it was. My palm itched for the feel of his cheek again. It calmed slightly when I picked up on his discomfort, the flash of remorse at what he'd said. "But you don't have to go to *Darla*." I spat her name distastefully. Considerable residual issues.  
  
"I didn't..." he said, then sighed. "She was just... there and I wanted..."  
  
"To get laid?" I snapped smartly, though a part of me threw a little celebration that he hadn't gone to her. She'd just been there and he'd...  
  
Okay, maybe not so much bright side potential.  
  
"To feel warm," he mumbled, sinking down into a crouch, his elbows resting on his knees.  
  
"She's a vampire," I said precisely, looking down at his slumped back. "Vampires do not have warmth."  
  
"She had more than me!" he cried, rising fluidly. His coat flapped for an instant with the rapid movement. "Everything did."  
  
"So that's it? I said coldly. "First time it gets difficult, you get a little lonely and depressed, you go screw some evil?"  
  
I realised, way back somewhere in the part of me that has the positive feelings, that I wasn't helping, but I needed this in a way I couldn't describe... wanted to pour out my anger on his suffering shoulders. Xander may really believe in my wonderful heart, but when it comes to Angel, it's not so wonderful; it's hampered by the certainty that he'll love me anyway. So far, at least.  
  
"It's always difficult," he said, coming out in a little righteous wrath. "You've got no idea what it's like to try for this distant promise, alone except for all the memories..."  
  
Many of which she features in.  
  
"You're not alone," I insisted, able to be quiet, think more, feel more, in the face of his bleak anger. What's the saying? There's always the lover and the loved in a relationship? This was the sane and the mad, swinging erratically.  
  
He indicated his head. "I am in here. Apart for the demon. Here whispering to me. Always. We're the same thing."  
  
"You're not," I said. His old fear... to be like the thing he remembers revelling in being. He thinks he is with as much ferocity as I know he's not.  
  
"Close enough," he said tonelessly. "The darkness is there. The demon just uses it."  
  
Natural, human darkness... that's different. It's more frightening, more imaginative. 'There but for the grace of God go I'. But easier to control. It's inherent enough in the Slayer for me to know that. It's inherent enough in Angel for a denial to be useless.  
  
"But you knew that," I argued. "You've always lived with that. You control that."  
  
"But everybody lives with it," he said. "It never hit me before... there's no good, you know? Or they'd all be angels."  
  
"Who?" I said, lost. If he started babbling, I would probably end up resorting - again - to the physical violence I dearly wanted to avoid; it wouldn't solve anything, and it might take him from me totally.  
  
I won't lose him to this. He's better than it. We're stronger than it.  
  
"People!" he said impatiently. "Humanity. It's just... awful. All the evil in their hearts."  
  
I've seen enough human monsters to not have a ready comeback to that. Maybe there just isn't one.  
  
"Humanity is pretty bad," I said softly. "Collectively. You helped individuals. Saved the soul of each person. They weren't evil."  
  
Even Faith wasn't all evil, in the end. It was *me* who was down on her, and he saved her. He made her want to change. And that's just one I know about. I felt a sudden, sharp conviction, as if it came arrowing in from outside me, that he had to believe that again. That he could help people. He never was really big on the self-belief.  
  
"They may not be angels," I went on, not seeing any response in him, but warming to my subject, "but if... if they were evil, they'd be demons, you know? And not even all of them are so bad."  
  
"I am," he said, very quietly.  
  
I reached out, tentatively, and after a moment of hesitation he let me take his hand.  
  
"You're not as bad as you think you are," I said carefully, unwilling to dissipate the sudden, fragile peace that had descended from the echoey darkness.  
  
"Worse," he said, but he didn't let go of my hand. I tried to concentrate on sending him good vibes down the connection. It's weird how you'll start to believe in things while you're in a tight spot: like an atheist who prays as their plane spirals downwards. This felt as serious.  
  
"No," I said firmly.  
  
"It all stopped having a point a long time ago," he said, his gaze fixed on mine. The confrontational had gone from both of us. I know Angel was a Catholic when he was human; I felt almost like a priest, hearing his confession. It had that kind of quiet peace to it.  
  
And maybe salvation at the end of it, though I don't think there's anyone can grant that to him but himself.  
  
"Then when Holland made me see there was no winning..."  
  
Who the hell was Holland?  
  
No matter; opening.  
  
"That's not why we fight," I jumped in smoothly. "We fight because there are things worth fighting for. You told me that as well... it's given me strength through a lot of hard fights."  
  
"What do you fight for?" he asked me softly.  
  
I thought about it.  
  
"Other people," I said eventually. "So they don't have to. So they don't even have to know there's fighting to be done."  
  
"Is that best for them, though?" he said. "Is it fair to them? Is it fair to you?"  
  
I didn't have to think about that.  
  
"No, it's not," I said honestly. "But it's who I am. I can't *not*. And there's a part of you that can't not, either... even on a vengeance gig, you did some helping. That's who you are."  
  
And there it is. No big revelations about my nature, none about his. Nothing we hadn't thought a thousand times and never needed to say.  
  
We fight because that's who we are.  
  
"Something a little more concrete would be nice right now," he whispered.  
  
"Family," I said without hesitation.  
  
"I don't have any anymore," he said, simply, but not without sorrow.  
  
"You can," I assured him, a little excitedly.  
  
"Yeah?" he said, with the familiar bittersweet half-smile I hadn't seen on him, for so long. His grip got fainter, and I looked up in alarm to see him fading inexorably.  
  
And then I remembered.  
  
Maybe all he would do was float around for eternity, thinking about it and wondering - seeing me still? I don't know - and watching the demon that wears his body commit atrocities.  
  
"Where are you going?" I said, desperately and uselessly clutching tight to the hand that disappeared from my very grip.  
  
"Angel?"  
  
He just looked at me unfathomably, fading slowly, becoming colourless and dull against the stark black of the surroundings I hadn't noticed since he stepped in.  
  
My last image of him was standing, grey and transparent and alone.  
  
As if I was the one moving away from him.  
  
"Angel!" 


	18. Say I'm Only Dreaming

TITLE: Say I'm Only Dreaming  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 16  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Nope, I'm not Joss. I don't think there's anything wrong with having all my characters be happy at the same time *sigh*.  
TIMELINE: After 'The Body'.  
SPOILERS: 'The Body', general season 5.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy thinks about why she can't sleep.   
DISTRIBUTION: Anyone can have it, I'd just like to know who you are!  
FEEDBACK: Is adored.  
RATING: PG  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is really more of a general Buffy POV than a usual OWIS, but then the episode wasn't like a usual 'Buffy'. I hope it's okay.  
DEDICATION: Lasca, for providing the inspiration.  
  
  
  
  
  
It's not that I don't want to see him. It's that I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want to shut Mom out, if I am when all that seems to be painted on my eyelids is the image of her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Not staring.  
  
Eyes are the windows to the soul. His eyes really did show the difference between the demon and the soul. Mom's eyes really did show the difference between her soul being there... in her body... and it being... where? I guess there's somewhere. Angel's soul always went 'somewhere'. Maybe it's different if the body that's left really is left a body.  
  
What do my eyes show? Not much. Emptiness, weariness... the absence of emotion, negative emotion. It's obvious I've been crying. The whites of my eyes aren't white, they're bloodshot, around my eyes is swollen and my nose is red from all the tears. My lips and cheeks are hurting from wearing the fixed, fake, thank-you-for-your-sympathy smile. I don't want their sympathy. I don't want to be in a position to be getting it.  
  
He wouldn't give me sympathy. He'd give me comfort, and understanding, and a safe, warm place to cry. He wouldn't say anything until he knew I wanted to listen, and then he'd know exactly what to say to make me feel better. Not a lot better. But it'd be smart, and wise, and right because it'd be out of love. He'd give me so much more than sympathy. I'm not sure why I won't go for it.  
  
If he's there to give it, anyway. I haven't forgotten what he told me, about Darla. I don't think he's lost his soul. No-one's called, no-one's come. And so he must be okay, and even if he's not, what help would I be? I'm not in a position to spout off about the good in the world and the good of people and the eventual rightness of fate. Fate took my mother; Destiny screwed me over, again. Could *he* help *me* find the right? Maybe I'll find out.  
  
But not tonight. Tonight I have to be here, ready to soothe Dawn if she wakes crying the way she cried herself to sleep, not embroiled in a dream with Angel. He's not here. He doesn't know. And I don't think my mother liked him much anyway.  
  
Dawn shifted, rolling away from my shoulder. She groped blindly around the bed, and I cast around for a second before reaching for Mr. Gordo and placing him in her arms. She hugged him tightly. God knows whether she realised what she was doing. I'd hoped that drowned in the darkness of sleep she'd be able to forget for a little while, and it doesn't even look like she's been granted that.  
  
I already know what I'd be granted is Angel. Right now, I'd like the silence.  
  
Almost my first thought after I found the body - God -, and Giles came was about Dawn. My sister. She is my sister, and I'm prepared to fight for her; that was the first real clarity I had. *Mommy told me... love Dawn like she loves me*. Mom really loved me, and I *will* make sure Dawn has that. My dad might not even try to get custody, and how awful is that? He won't win, anyway. I'm an adult, I live here, where Dawn knows, and I've got family here. Inbuilt support system. I expect I'll have to drop out of school; it was never going to do much for me anyway. I'm the Slayer. Even beside my mother's body, I had to be the Slayer.  
  
I watched Dawn for a couple of minutes, watching her expressions as she lay in a dream I couldn't see and probably wouldn't understand. When I was pretty sure she wasn't going to wake up, I leaned over and kissed her cheek gently. Trying to put into it everything I felt from Mom's kisses. It didn't seem to help her.  
  
I wandered out of my room. I considered the roof outside the window, but I felt kind of wobbly. This time Angel wouldn't be there to catch me if I slipped.  
  
I hovered outside Mom's room for a few moments, but I didn't want to go in just yet. Not now, in the dark, alone in the house. I've seen too much not to believe in ghosts. And the thought of going through her things made me feel physically sick. I know it won't help anything to pretend that she's just out of town for the night. But it won't help me to go in there either. Maybe in a couple of days... I guess I'll have to. No-one's made funeral noises yet, but I've seen enough death to be a pro at this.  
  
The funeral part, at least. The part where it's my mother's funeral... that part is new. Maybe she could wear that new dress she wore for her date. I remember her happy in that dress. I'll talk to Dawn. Maybe not if it's going to be cremation. I don't even know if my mother would have wanted cremation or burial. I welcomed the wave of irrational anger which swept through me, burning out, albeit temporarily (so temporarily), the aimlessness. She could have died through that operation. She should have discussed with me what she wanted to happen if anything went wrong, not that I would have wanted to hear it, but she should have told me so I know if I'm doing what she wants because something has gone wrong and I just made it to the toilet before I threw up.  
  
I tried to retch quietly so I didn't wake up Dawn. She needs me to be strong, and thinking of that helps me to be.  
  
I flushed the toilet and washed my mouth out with clear water. I looked into the mirror, ignoring my reflection; I know I look like crap. Maybe I thought I'd be able to look in the mirror and if I didn't see her, she must be there. I guess so much time with Angel made me think that.  
  
I opened the cabinet and considered sedatives. If they'd even work on me. Milk sounded better; big cup of little-girl-warm milk. Mom swore by it for helping insomnia. When I was young, before Dawn came (before I remember Dawn coming), when I had nightmares I'd crawl, sleepy and scared, into my parents' bed and let Mom cuddle me while Dad went for milk. That was before they started arguing a lot. I'd be squished between my parents, and drink my milk, and let them talk me back to sleep, and when I woke up again I'd be back in my own bed.  
  
I used to be determined I'd do that for my kids one day. Soothe them back to sleep with hugs and love and warm milk; I guess every parent thinks they will. I'm not going to be a parent. This is so hard for me, now... how can I have a baby knowing I'm practically guaranteed to put them through it in their early years? Even normal people don't last forever, and it's always sudden, like Tara said. My death will be sudden, but it's always half-expected. You hope - I hope I won't die, but the prospect is there. Most people don't have to think like that.  
  
I wish I didn't. Part of me is almost glad that now I'll never put Mom through losing her daughter. Child burying parent, that's the natural order, right?  
  
I felt sick again. I hadn't eaten for a while.  
  
I wandered down the stairs. The house was really silent. And cold. I realised my skin was covered in goosebumps and reached distractedly for the cardigan hanging on the banister, wrapping it around me. It was Mom's. I thought for a moment I could smell her on it, but even Slayer senses couldn't pick anything up.  
  
Well, those same Slayer senses were afraid of the dark right then, so I guess that's understandable.  
  
The darkness inside the house was more oppressive that the paling predawn outside. I crossed the living room, avoiding the couch. Maybe I'll have it burnt.  
  
I pulled the back door open and sat on the porch. I did this when I first knew she was sick. Back at the beginning. Now at the end. I felt better than then, for her... the pain's gotta be over... but for me...  
  
You're not sad for the person who's died. You're sad for you, left behind and lonely and crying and wondering how the hell you're going to cope. It's selfish, but I never get much time to be selfish; there's always a hell portal to be closed or a giant snake to stop. Or a little sister to comfort. That's not really fair, it makes me sound like I resent her or something... I don't. I think she'll help.  
  
I never got the spiel about stars being the spirits of people who have died, but leaning back and looking at them, fading to pinpricks as the sky lightened, preparing for sunrise, it seemed like a nice idea. Like I said, we don't know where they do go. Somewhere where they can watch us is a nice thought. Maybe I'll pull Dawn out here in a couple of days, get her to pick one with me. Mom-star.  
  
Not like having her here. Obviously. It still feels like she is, though... I know I haven't processed, that I'm clinging onto a truth that isn't true anymore. I just don't know how not to. How can she never be going to come home again? Her stuff is here. We're here. But she's only here on photos, in my head.  
  
I'll never see my mother's face again.  
  
I wrapped my hands together in my lap, turning my knuckles white, and realised with a surprise it was wet. I raised a hand to my cheeks and noted with detached surprise that they were wet, tears were dripping from my abused eyes and down my throat and into my lap. It's amazing how quickly you get inured to crying. I've done... a lot. Often over someone going away. Dad, Angel, Riley, Mom.  
  
I didn't realise how much I needed her until I realised I've got to stop, because she simply isn't here anymore. Not simply. The most complicated, confusing thing in the world. Why my Mom? Haven't I done enough? Hasn't she done too little?  
  
I closed my eyes, feeling the tears squeeze relentlessly through anyway. I leaned back, and for a minute there was a cool, solid chest there to rest against, and comforting familiar arms around me, his body curled protectively around mine, my head nestled in the curve of his shoulder and his head a soothing weight on my hair.  
  
I opened my eyes, and I was alone. 


	19. In Thoughts Of You (interlude)

TITLE: In Thoughts Of You  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep interlude  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Angel's mine. He's chained up right here... oh, wait, no, I'm awake.  
TIMELINE: After 'Epiphany'.  
SPOILERS: 'Epiphany', general season 2 arc.  
SYNOPSIS: Angel wonders why Buffy never met him in the dream.  
DISTRIBUTION: Sure. I'll give it to anyone.  
FEEDBACK: Think of it as your good deed for the day.  
RATING: PG  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is short, because though I wanted to consider Angel's thoughts after Buffy didn't show in the dream, I'm planning a different POV fic and I only have so much material in me g.  
ANTI-DEDICATION: Whoever decided to move the 'Epiphany' wildfeed to so late. Grrr.  
  
  
  
  
  
Come from the blackness of a dream into the blackness of night-time reality and there's not much difference, even to vampire eyes. Especially when neither blackness is relieved with the sparkling blaze of a golden girl, a vital, fighting, *living* love.  
  
She wasn't there.  
  
I closed my eyes again and schooled my unnecessary breaths into long, calming droughts of air. When I was relaxed, I took a deep breath and fell into myself.  
  
Mediatation is such an easy trick. Of course, I say that after long centuries of practice. Even Angelus saw the advantages of calm in a fight. Often didn't use them, but... I liked to keep my options open. With my soul, it became a way to try and reconnect with the God I sought, so hard and so futilely.  
  
Lately it's been a way to disconnect from everything. Everything except myself, and all that entailed; for instance, Buffy.  
  
I knew immediately that she lived. It's not just hyperbole when I say she's my light: deep inside my ravaged soul, I carry her with me as I believe she carries me, knowingly or not. The undimmed glow told my worried probe that she was alive.  
  
But not well, then? Rather than helping me, the knowledge that she lived set me to worrying more. The worst hasn't happened, but something has.  
  
Possibly just that she wasn't asleep right then.  
  
Possibly just that she's blocking me out, frustrated with my behaviour and my admission of guilt over Darla.  
  
(Darla. God. I changed the sheets three times.)  
  
Another apology to make, more forgiveness to ask; more deserved than the my friends, because there's less she could have done. And my apology to *them* will be well-deserved. I've worked through about half of the Seven Deadly Sins in the last few months. Pride, I'm forsaking now. It'll be worth it. I'm determined to earn their trust back, and I'm in a position to persevere. Humanity will be a long time in coming, should it come at all.  
  
I have to wonder - reluctantly, because though I've told myself fiercely it is *not* the object and certainly not the reason, it still shines ahead like a Holy Grail - I wonder if it will really make too much difference to my life. Helping becomes ingrained; however much I tried to throw it off, the instinct was there. Separating me from the demon. Eventually telling me that the helping; it really is all. Human, or as the vampiric demon/soul hybrid that I alone lay claim to.  
  
So if my lifestyle won't change with the onset of a heartbeat and ability to truly know the light, experience the sun - what will?  
  
And again and again, the answer comes back to me, the answer I was given by agents of Good and Evil on a day that never was: Buffy. The Slayer. The woman I love but am unworthy of, finally allowed to become mine. Surely it is among the plans of the Powers, for her to be happy if not me. I left her, I have no right to her, but I do believe (not without jealousy) that while she may find contentment and pleasure and satisfaction with her life and other people, other men, she can only find true happiness, real bliss, in my arms, as I only found it in hers.  
  
Restless, I climbed out of bed, crossing to the balcony. LA can never be truly quiet, especially to my ears, but the predawn gets pretty close, the famous smog blanketing the noise of the occasional speeding car. I leaned against the wall and stared sightlessly over the city. LA is often beautiful, but never as beautiful as Buffy.  
  
Spare the world a fallen hero spouting laden, amateur cliches. I must be tired.  
  
I tipped my head back against the cold hotel, paying close, idle attention to the feel of the slight wind brushing my dead skin, the bitter taste of the morning air, the scent of vanilla-  
  
Some unknown sense cautioned me to move carefully. Without looking up, I reached out tentatively.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Her scent hit me again, mixed with a hint of salt. Tears. I closed my eyes and concentrated on that smell, and after a short, infinite moment I felt her against me, curving her back to fit snugly against my chest. My arms slid around her not-quite-solid waist, and warm hands clasped mine at her belly. Her head turned under my chin, I rested it there, and she was gone.  
  
I opened my eyes and gazed out over my city again. My thought of her beauty may have been childish, but it was right; even the *idea* of Buffy, the vision of her in my mind which somehow never compared to her in the flesh, looks better than most things I can imagine.  
  
I walked back into the bedroom, lying on the bed, almost able to feel the slight indentation, the change of pressure she would cause lying next to me.  
  
I closed my eyes again, hoping sleep would come quickly - hoping she would be there.  
  
A lifetime will be worth more to me than eternity. But neither is worth much if I can't spend it with her. 


	20. That Was Just A Dream

TITLE: That Was Just A Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 17  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Well, who do they belong to at this very moment? UPN yet? Still Joss, at any rate.  
TIMELINE: After 'Forever' and 'Disharmony'.  
SPOILERS: See above, plus general season 5 arcs.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel are back sharing the dreams.  
DISTRIBUTION: Anyone is welcome to it, if they let me know.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Remember me? Writing this dream series? It's been a while (too many reruns!) so the previous installments can be found at http://www.geocities.com/hold_my_soul/owis/owismain.html  
FEEDBACK: Is always adored.  
RATING: PG  
THANKS: Trix, for the summary... but kind of not because you just made me *really* desperate to see it g.  
  
  
  
  
It's always about unfinished business between Angel and I. Why he shows up to save my life and I go if I think I have to protect his. Why he knows when it's my mental state rather than the physical that desperately needs the help. Why I spent all night talking to him not two days ago, and yet I want to hear his voice again.  
  
Seriously needy still, sure. But also because it didn't seem anything *like* as long as a whole night.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I guess every established couple has a 'spot', like they have a song and inside jokes. I know Anya and Xander do, because she told us. I also know *why* it's Their Place because she told us that to, despite efforts to dissuade her. I think Tara and Will do. I know she had one with Oz.  
  
If I'd been asked before, I don't know what I would have said was mine and Angel's place, while being totally and completely sure that we do have one. His old apartment, maybe, where we made love for the first - for the only - time. Although there's bad memories there too which pretty much discount it. Or the roof outside my bedroom window, which was how I got out to him and he came in to me for most of our relationship. Again, though, including during the bad Angelus-stalking parts, so not there either. The mansion? Where we spent countless nights cuddled carefully close, exchanging falsely chaste kisses and quiet words... and where I sent him to hell and watched him delirious and dying with poison?  
  
My life just resists any attempt at 'normal girl' stuff.  
  
I got a new candidate the other night - the tree we sat under for hours, exchanging one dangerously unchaste kiss and quiet words. And if it's practically in sight of my mother's grave; well, that puts it at about equal in the drawbacks category.  
  
Perhaps that'll wind up being a bigger drawback than those of any of the others, when it really sinks in. So far, she could almost be on vacation, the length of time she's been gone. Is it supposed to be a long process, like it has been this last week? Slowly taking over Mom's responsibilities, letting the emotions wash over and past me without letting them register? Or should it be fast, painfully, guttingly fast, like opening the door on an empty street tonight?  
  
I doubt Angel will be able to tell me - he was gently firm when insisting that everyone reacts differently but it's all valid so not to let that of all things bother me at all - but he'll help, even just by being with me.  
  
"Dawn tried a reanimation spell tonight," I announced, walking up to the tree where he sat legs extended, hands lost in the folds of that coat, head back against the trunk, eyes closed.  
  
I was absently impressed by the speed with which he was up from his awkward position and holding both my hands with his, peering anxiously into my face, reacting to the uncontrollable (when I don't have to, like around everyone else) shake and crack in my voice as much as my words.  
  
"What happened?" he said, leading me over to where the ground was shaded and protected by the foliage canopy of the tree and settling me down. His manner was nearly paternal, but the firm, loving grip he kept around my waist was anything but.  
  
"I slapped her," I said, and burst into tears.  
  
Angel's really good when I cry on him, not at all nervous like some guys get. I can't think it's anything but natural talent, as I'm pretty sure Darla and Dru weren't much for vampire tears. Well, maybe Dru. Probably Dru. But I think he picked it up with the sister he's mentioned before. I can see him soothing his baby sister, lulling her out of tears and into sleep; can see him doing that with any baby, actually, including his or ours, but there's no good going down that path.  
  
He didn't try that with me, anyway, at least not yet. He just let me cry, pulling me securely into his lap with little effort, settling my head into the cool crook of his neck, wrapping his arms tightly around me and murmuring tender nonsense in my ear.  
  
When I slowed and started sniffling, he produced a handkerchief. A proper old-fashioned cotton handkerchief, like Giles', which was to be expected, but that fact that he had one at all surprised me, until I remembered this was a dreamscape and he could have pretty much what he liked. It seemed so much like the real time.  
  
"You holding up okay?" he said against my cheek, his arms barely letting me pull away far enough to blow my nose and rearrange myself.  
  
I gave a half-laugh half-snuffle and gestured to myself despairingly.  
  
"In general, I meant," he added, and I shrugged and burrowed back into him.  
  
"Still trying to get through every minute," I said. He stroked my hair. I'd told him I didn't know how I was going to get through the next few days, and he told me not to; to get through the next few minutes, and then the ones after that, and after that. It's working, so far, but it's not the most fun way to do life; enduring rather than living, but even enduring is better than floating the way I was. I'd ask him if it's how he manages life, but I'm not sure I want to hear the answer.  
  
"Do you want to talk about...?" he asked.  
  
"I don't know how she managed it," I said quietly. "She must have had help... Tara said she got the spell from a book at their place... but the actual spell... I'm not sure I want to know."  
  
"If it didn't work, then -"  
  
"It worked," I interrupted him simply.  
  
He stiffened against me, his hand briefly freezing its slow caresses over my loose hair.  
  
"Buffy..."  
  
"We saw her... shadow and she knocked to be let in..." I felt the tears well up from deep inside me, the part that should be cried out by now, but there always seems to be more moisture. Angel responded by stilling his hands on the small of my back, on the skin just under the shirt, so that I shivered pleasureably from the cold of his hand slowly warming up on my skin. It's... nice, to make him warm like that. To share my heat with him, and it's even nicer to feel his plentiful energy coiling about me, protective and supportive.  
  
"I opened the door and Dawn ended the spell," I finished. "So we'll never know if it worked... really worked, or if she would have been..." I couldn't finish. I've spent the past days yearning for my mother back with a desperate strength I never imagined. When I thought I had her back, it felt like absolution, like none of it had been real except as some some test I'd passed and so I got her back. Now to think I might have gotten her back but it not her, rather some lesser version of her - it's just... not right. Disrespectful, and yet in that moment, I wanted her back no matter what it was of her, just any way at all. No matter what she would have wanted, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.  
  
"You know that was best?" he said, his tone tentative. He usually thinks he knows what's best for me, but in this case I know he's right.  
  
"Yeah, I do. It doesn't stop me wanting her back," I admitted.  
  
"That's normal," he said, and kissed the top of my head. "Just for us - people like us, who know it's possible, I think it might be worse."  
  
"Is death different when you're immortal?" I asked.  
  
He sighed, and I could tell that he didn't think this was the best thing to be going into right now, and also that he wasn't keen on answering - wasn't sure of his answer - but that he would.  
  
"Death? No," he said. "The attitude to death - completely."  
  
"How?" I encouraged.  
  
I felt his shrug in the arms that enfolded me.  
  
"Very few things have real immortality. You've killed vampires, other things that are supposed to be immortal. A lot of them wrongly assume they're invulnerable. They're surprised to be killed."  
  
"And you?" I prompted, resting my hand on his leg in a tacit message that if he didn't answer, I wouldn't mind.  
  
"I guess I fear it more," he said thoughtfully. "More to lose. Or less, depending on how you look at it." He sighed. "And then there's the whole issue of after death."  
  
"You'll be fine," I said, uncomfortable with the subject in reference to him and in reference to my mom. She's in a good place, I'm sure. I have to believe she is. Even if I don't know where.  
  
Will Angel go to a good place? He's already been in the bad. I think he will. I'm not sure he does.  
  
"You know Cordy's old friend Harmony, right?" he asked, and despite not at all understanding the segue I squeezed his leg to let him know I supported the subject change, and in gratitude that he'd answered.  
  
"The non-bad Big Bad," I said, "former girlfriend of Spike... she ended up in LA?"  
  
"Yeah," he said. "She came, she saw, she betrayed."  
  
"Betrayed who?" I said.  
  
"Cordy."  
  
Ah. Yes. Because we never told Cordelia that Harmony is a vampire.  
  
"We never told Cordelia that Harmony's a vampire," I told him.  
  
"No," he said. "But it was after she knew."  
  
"You trusted her?" I said. Not that I don't have something of a history of trusting vamps, but Harmony isn't only a vampire. She's an airhead vampire.  
  
"Not me," he said. "Cordelia. Wanted to. I pretty much backed her up."  
  
"Why?" I said.  
  
"To get into her good graces," he said, "and when that didn't work I... kind of resorted to bribery."  
  
"Bribery," I repeated. "You?"  
  
"She said we weren't friends," he confessed softly, and though since it was Cordelia I wasn't exactly sure why that would bother him, it obviously did. I slipped both arms around his neck in a light hug, and he renewed his grip around my waist.  
  
"Well, if you're not friends, what are you doing with them?" I asked practically.  
  
"Working for them," he replied.  
  
"Working for as...?" I said.  
  
"Dogsbody, I think," he said heavily, and I could already hear the slightest bit of resentment, light enough that I didn't know if he was aware of it yet. It didn't surprise me; Angel was a Master vampire for a century and a half. Vamps don't get to that position without being dominant. He always showed shades of leadership in Sunnydale, and when I visited LA last spring, I saw how it has blossomed. He won't do well taking orders for long. Especially if they're orders like...  
  
"I have to *make their coffee*," he said, embarrassment and a little annoyance colouring his tones.  
  
Of course Cordelia wouldn't bring herself to be generous about it.  
  
"I know I owe them... a lot of work to regain their trust," he went on, "and reassurance that I won't go off again. And the office in my home, apparently. But I'd kind of hoped degradation and getting lectured at wouldn't be on the menu."  
  
"Don't let them go too far," I cautioned softly.  
  
"I won't," he said, but I knew he would. He clings to whatever attachments he can painfully make, will go far to retain them, and the family he's built himself won't be any different. He'll keep trying as long as he thinks there's something worth trying *for*, especially with the whole new, confusing, 'the smallest things count the most' attitude he explained to me under the tree. I've only heard his (sometimes garbled) account of what's been going on... but maybe if they'd listened a little more to him early on it wouldn't have gone this far. And okay, my opinion is biased.  
  
So "You will," I countered, and he laughed ruefully.  
  
"I've been lonely, Buffy. It's easy to get used to having people around."  
  
"Easier than it is to get used to them..." my voice trembled.  
  
"Not being around," he finished. "Yeah."  
  
I felt gentle fingers on my chin and raised my face to his without hesitation. His eyes were wet, for me, matching the new as-yet unshed tears in mine. I kissed him, in this place where we didn't have to worry about stopping, and we held the kiss for a long moment, unmoving, feeling each other breathe, and then his tongue flickered out tentatively to meet mine and we kissed with rising intensity.  
  
It ended too early and too late - do I really need more complications right now, even Angel-shaped ones? - but this time he stayed until the 'sun' came up.  
  
I didn't look at him, at the way the sun would fall on his pale face (and how could it when I didn't know how it would look, couldn't create it), for fear that suddenly this wouldn't be a dream and he'd somehow be ashes decorating the ground.   
  
I simply reassured myself feeling the tender strength of his body behind me as we waited out the sunrise together.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
NOTE: During this series, I've managed to get the installment referring to each set of new eps written and posted before the following eps air, which was my aim. However, with now a straight run of new episodes each week until the end of May, and RL growing on me, I'm not sure I'll be able to get them out that quickly. I'll do my best and hopefully they'll continue coming before the eps; just please be prepared if they don't :). 


	21. When You Dream

I have had a week somewhat fraught with unexpected events, which is my explanation for the late appearance of this and the non-appearance of the new chapter of WIAF I said would be out... obviously it's not, but bear with me and it will be as soon as possible. Also, this has had only the most cursory of going-overs; for anyone who's interested, a (hopefully) better version will be up at http://www.geocities.com/hold_my_soul/ in a few days.  
  
  
  
  
TITLE: When You Dream  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 18  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: They're not mine... almost thankfully, at the moment. Tell you what, I'll have season 2 Buffy and end-season-1 Ats Angel, and they can have them how they are.  
TIMELINE: Directly following 'Intervention' and 'Dead End'.  
SPOILERS: Yeah, lots.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy. Angel. Dream.  
FEEDBACK: Would be treasured.  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's not the Hokey-Pokey, it's the Hokey-Cokey. But in the interests of accuracy and seeing as Buffy is American, I have grudgingly ceded it in the fic.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
When I fell in love with Angel and made the decision to actually pursue it, I think I realised - with some instinctive knowledge of how vampire relationships work and of how I work and how this was somehow different from the affectionate pangs I'd felt and witnessed before - I half knew I was tying myself to him, so tightly I might never get away. It didn't bother me then. It usually doesn't bother me now.  
  
It *does* bother me that I seem to have somehow tied myself to his whole damn bloodline.  
  
Spike and Angel share a lot of things. Darkness. A demon. Concentration on the hair and the leather. A deep, abiding hatred for one another. A deep, obsessive love for me.  
  
Obviously Angel isn't aware of that last or Spike would be dust flung to the corners of the Earth by now. I'm not sure why I haven't let that happen. I don't particularly mind if Spike gets dusted, but I don't really want to do it myself, not while he's... well, not impotent, from Xander's description of him and the Bot, which I am trying oh so desperately to repress, but... I guess not helpless either because he manages to do enough destruction without resorting to violence...  
  
Okay, I don't know why I haven't staked him.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I grew up in LA and I really have no problems with the desert. However, I wasn't jumping to return right now, even subconsciously - or especially subconsciously. I don't want that to be the First Slayer's domain. *I* don't want to be the First Slayer's domain.  
  
A nice safe bedroom, that was the place to go. Literally. Relatively safe, for Angel and I.  
  
I was aiming for my bedroom, but then you can't have everything. Angel's room is nice. A little dark, but then I don't really expect anything else. And he has an actual balcony, which beats a roof.  
  
"Hi," I said to announce my presence and then sat on his bed and curled myself into his arms without delay. He stroked my hair.  
  
"How are you?" he said.  
  
"Getting along," I said, then swallowed through a sudden lump in my throat. "I..."  
  
"Yeah?" he said when I didn't go on.  
  
"I can't... I can't remember her face," I said in an agonised rush. "I can see her features perfectly, and then when I try and put them together it just..."  
  
"Shh," he said, his voice soothing, reacting automatically to my distress. I felt the familiar weight of his head come to rest on mine and snuggled closer into the crook of his neck.  
  
"It's only been a couple of weeks," I said, sniffling a little. "I was away for longer during school last year."  
  
"But you knew she was there so you didn't think about it," he said reasonably. "This is... different."  
  
"I had the photos out and it's helped," I said.  
  
"Good," he said.  
  
"You don't have photos," I said. "Do you remember...?"  
  
"Yes," he said, his tone unemotional. "But only at the end."  
  
I knew immediately what he meant, and I was speechless for a second. That a bunch of people who take family so seriously can work a curse that makes a man remember *his* family only at the moment when he killed them... Angel himself defends the Romany's actions, but all they do for me is make me remember about human monsters.  
  
"You still remember your mom," he carried on, his voice warm again, through his pain and back to concerning himself with mine. He's often disregarded his own feelings in the face of... well, practically anyone else's, but especially mine. It annoys me sometimes, but right then I was just glad for it.  
  
"How she loved you, stuff you did together... you won't forget her, Buffy. I promise."  
  
"Oh, I know," I said. "It just - hurt. Not to be able to see her."  
  
He kissed the top of my head. "Death's like that."  
  
"Yeah," I said bitterly. "You want to know what else I was told death is a couple of days ago? My gift."  
  
"Told by whom?" he said, sounding surprised and a little dangerous. His arms tightened unconsciously about me.  
  
"A guide. In the form of the First Slayer."  
  
"The First Slayer?" he said.  
  
"Yeah," I said, "there was a whole thing with her haunting our dreams a while ago. She was more lucid this time."  
  
"The First Slayer wasn't lucid," he said, definitively enough to cause me to tilt back my head at a painful angle to catch his chocolate eyes with mine.  
  
"And you know this how?"  
  
"Well, you know," he said, avoiding my gaze. "There are stories."  
  
"Vampire stories?" I said in bafflement. Vampires haven't ever struck me as the types to have a grand oral tradition.  
  
Apart from the biting people.  
  
"In the larger orders, yeah," he said.  
  
Ah. And of course Angelus would have been a social animal of the time.  
  
"Stories like..."  
  
"She was wild," he said. "She was rumoured to have a bloodlust stronger than most vampires."  
  
"A... literal bloodlust?" I asked uncertainly.  
  
"Mmm. Not to drink. Like - warpaint."  
  
"Eew," I said, this time with certainty. "You should tell Giles about that stuff."  
  
"This guide must have been something powerful," he said, segueing abruptly. I didn't feel like calling him on it - these are probably details I neither need nor want.  
  
I've *felt* that bloodlust. I know it, sometimes late at night when I'm tired... I've felt not only the urge to patrol, to hunt, but to *destroy*, put my ancient enemy to death and exult in the light smatter of dust. Is that what Faith felt? What drove her? I don't want to be a hunter like that, living only for the kill. I won't be like that.  
  
"I guess," I said. "Giles and I went to the desert. He did the Hokey-Pokey. I followed a lion. I got talked at."  
  
"He did the Hokey-Pokey?" Angel said, and I could hear the grin.  
  
"That was my reaction," I said.  
  
"Why did you go to it?" he said.  
  
I shifted uncomfortably, slipping an arm over his chest, absently enjoying feeling hard muscle under the thin black shirt. It's been a while since I've been lying around a bed with one of the male of the species, and I've kind of missed it. Snuggling is good.  
  
"I told you Dawn felt like I was blocking her out, right?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
I shrugged against him. "So she's not the first."  
  
He knew who I was talking about, bless him. "That wasn't your fault."  
  
"Wasn't it? I never opened up to him."  
  
"Doesn't mean you're shut down, Buffy," he argued.  
  
"You have to say that," I said, fiddling idly with his top button. "You don't like him and love me."  
  
"Do you love me?"  
  
"You know I do," feeling a sudden panic grip me. If Angel... someone I opened up to, laid myself bare to... didn't know how I felt about him, I was *definitely* lacking.  
  
"Say it," he demanded.  
  
I leaned my head up to him, not painful this time, and our gazes locked.  
  
"I love you," I said clearly.  
  
He smiled and caressed my cheek with gentle fingers. "You don't sound emotionally numb to me."  
  
"Well, she said I was full of love," I admitted. "But then she said it would lead me to my gift."  
  
"Which is..."  
  
"Death," I finished glumly.  
  
He sat up against the headboard, pulling me with him so I was sprawled across his lap. I tangled the fingers of one hand in his shirt to anchor myself and wrapped my other arm around his neck.  
  
"That's not true," he said firmly.  
  
I looked at him gravely. "Isn't it?" My love was his death, once.  
  
He stared at me steadily, and I knew he was thinking of the same thing. I could see it in his eyes; the hint of anguish, the shadow of pain he thankfully never fully remembered, the regret, the crippling guilt - and deep, though he tried to hide it from me, the recently-fading certainty that it would have been better for him to stay there.  
  
But also: pride for me, for doing the necessary thing. A forgiveness that was hardly even forgiveness because he didn't think there was anything to forgive me for. Overpowering love undimmed from the time it had happened.  
  
Love, give, forgive. Risk the pain. It's my nature.  
  
Huh. Risk. So if I kiss Angel like *that* and he kisses back like *this* and pulls me even closer like *mmm* and I clutch at him like *ahhh*... that's risk of pain. My pain, his pain, the world's pain.  
  
But it's love. And it's Angel, so it's my nature. I can't stay away from him any more than... well, I want to avoid cheesy romance novel territory here, but any more than something does that really, really likes being near something else can.  
  
And Angel is an *excellent* kisser.  
  
When I eventually pulled back from him, we touched our foreheads together and he dropped lazy butterfly kisses over my cheeks, supporting me as I leant against his chest in that sort of pleasurably boneless way. It's not a new feeling, but Angel's the only guy who's ever made me feel it just from kissing.  
  
(Oh, and he has iron self-control. More than me, anyway.)  
  
"And how was your week at the office, honey?" I said, giggling in a way that was intended to be self-deprecating and ironic, but I think came across as more 'you want fries with that?'  
  
I caught his grin just before he tucked my head back under his chin.  
  
"I despatched one of the problem lawyers," he said.  
  
Ah. Well, that could mean a lot of things...  
  
"In a way that was non-gory, yes?" I said cautiously.  
  
He paused. "Yeah. I mean, he kind of despatched himself. He's gone, anyway."  
  
Despatched like 'out of the city' rather than 'out of this mortal coil'. That's reassuring, anyway. Means Angel's probably still bonding with the coffee maker for his demanding colleague/unfairly boss people.  
  
"How did that happen?"  
  
"He got a new hand, realised it was off someone he knew and walked out of the firm," he said, succinctly and pretty confusingly.  
  
"Right," I said. "The firm as in let's-drive-Angel-crazy firm?"  
  
"Yes," he confirmed.  
  
"So one less of them is good," I said, pleased. "Why did he need a new hand?"  
  
I think he thinks I don't notice when he's being evasive. Honestly, men. Like our relationship didn't get off on the entirely cryptic foot.  
  
"He... lost his," he said.  
  
"People," I said, enunciating carefully, "do not *lose* hands, Angel. They're attached. It's hard."  
  
"His wasn't attached."  
  
"And why wasn't it attached?"  
  
"I cut it off." His hands, resting naturally somewhere at the curve of my hips, tightened, imperceptibly to anyone without Slayer senses and nerves.  
  
"Why?" I said, careful to keep an unjudgemental tone.  
  
He sighed, his chest rising with the unnecessary action. He placed a tentative kiss on my forehead and I pressed closer in tacit encouragement.  
  
"Cordy was sick... he was burning a scroll which held the cure," he said simply.  
  
I can think of better reasons.  
  
Okay, that wasn't nice to Cordelia. But I can!  
  
"That's it?" I said.  
  
"It was kind of the bad end to a bad couple of days," he said, "and I don't like to think about it so..."  
  
"Okay," I said. Despite my curiosity, it was. I trust his judgement. But it made me think... when was this? There's a whole bunch of stuff from last year I don't know about. Of course, there's a good two centuries I know little about, but that I don't think of as my Angel and this... was just more I didn't know about him.  
  
I miss him more when I realise how much I've missed.  
  
"But he's got away from the firm and he can play the guitar again and hopefully he'll never, ever come back," Angel said with mostly-false cheer.  
  
"Guitar?" I said idly. "He any good?"  
  
Angel hesitated. "No."  
  
Yes.  
  
"Nothing special."  
  
Better than me.  
  
"Good," I said, playing my fingers idly over his stomach. "Good."  
  
Without saying a word, we slid back down the bed in synchrony, lying flat and comfortable on Angel's bed (and for a sackcloth and ashes type, his bedclothes are great. Really soft). I drifted off with his arms around me... and when I woke, I felt okay for a whole ten seconds before it hit me... and even then, it wasn't as bad as it's been.  
  
*Love* is my gift. 


	22. 

TITLE: Hoping You Were Dreaming Of Me  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: The characters are the property of Joss, but he doesn't mind us borrowing. No, really.  
TIMELINE: Around and about 'Tough Love' (before the final scene) and 'Belonging'. (See author's note).  
SPOILERS: Above.  
SYNOPSIS: I figure everyone has this by now.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: So here we are nearly at the end of the season and that means: many run-on episodes between which the characters have no time to sleep. Not having any better ideas, I'm just going to quietly ignore that. Same for the apparent months-long gap between 'Intervention' and 'Tough Love', which in this series just... doesn't exist because I didn't realise it was going to exist. Basically, in the fraughtness of the final eps I'm going to take lots of leeway. I know you don't mind g.  
FEEDBACK: It actually *might* make me write faster.  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
Xander was right. Love on the Hellmouth *sucks*. In an intentional pun way, because with Angel and I; well, the love didn't suck. The love is great. But the relationship spent some time sucking. The part of it when he was evil, as a for instance. But Tara and Willow were so... cosy, I think. They've been together for like a year and that was their first real fight, and it ends up like this. I mean, not that it's all attributable to the fight because Glory would have decided Tara's the Key anyway, but still.  
  
Which is major worry number two; Spike, now Tara. Glory's going through my friends and... non-friend but slayage-not-applicable's one by one. She won't figure it out because Dawn is 'new' in my life (thank you, monks) but it's only a matter of time before she goes for Dawn. And there's the small in a really big way matter of the friends she's going to go through *literally* before she gets to Dawn.  
  
But where can we hide from a god?  
  
* * * * *  
  
It's kind of a shame we can't move into the dreamscape (and that comment is a measure of how stressed I am, because it was stupid. But Angel doesn't mind that) because I don't think Glory would be able to get in here.  
  
Especially not *here* here (even though here is currently just my bedroom and may I cite exhaustion), because I like to think of my time with Angel here as private time.  
  
"I don't have a lot of time," he said apologetically, coming to sit next to me on the bed. "Asleep, I mean."  
  
"Why?" I said, with what concern I could spare.  
  
"Cordy's missing," he said, his long fingers beginning to worry at the edges of my duvet. I took it away from him and patted the space next to me. He shed his coat smoothly (a vampire and his leather coat will not be parted) and climbed in next to me while he explained, pulling me against him like it was the most natural thing... which it was, once. He used to tuck me in a lot before the curse made him unwilling to get too close.  
  
I tried to pay attention to what he was saying. I guess I wasn't that concerned because... well, because it was Cordy, but he was pretty agitated.  
  
"There was a whole big thing with portals," he said, waving a hand either dismissively or to signify a whole big portal thing. "We think she got sucked into another dimension."  
  
"What are you going to do?" I asked, wrapping myself around him.  
  
"Find her," he said with quiet, solid determination, in a tone laced with hints of fear and danger. "I don't know how, but... we will find her."  
  
He sounded almost desperate and I pressed myself more strongly to him, troubled and, okay, jealous. I didn't have any excuse to be, and I hoped I didn't have any reason to be... I mean, Cordelia? And Angel? But, how do I know what goes on in LA?  
  
I guess - pretty much the same as what goes on in Sunnydale, and if any of my friends disappeared to another dimension, I'd probably react the same, so I'll chalk that one up to temporary madness brought on by stress and never, ever tell Angel about it.  
  
"Do you love Cordelia?" I said.  
  
Oh yeah, never except for times when my mouth and my brain aren't connected.  
  
"Yeah," he said thoughtfully, and I could literally feel my heart sink. Angel's supposed to be my constant. "She's family, you know?" he carried on. "You love the gang, right?"  
  
"Yeah. Do you love Wesley?" I asked doubtfully.  
  
I had my face tilted up enough to see him grin. "I love you," he affirmed. The grin turned from sweet to mischievous. "You look better than Cordelia in a bikini."  
  
I sat up fast. I'm pretty sure he only evaded a bang on the chin with vampire reflexes.  
  
"When did you see Cordelia in a bikini?!" I demanded. It's not as if they could have had a company outing to the beach. At least not at a time when tanning was possible. Or swimming smart.  
  
"She got a national commercial," he said.  
  
"Oh," I said. "I mean, wow. Yay Cordy."  
  
"Mm," he said. "The director was kind of a megalomaniac."  
  
"Colour me stunned," I said.  
  
"Cost me a very expensive meal in celebration," he grumbled and I giggled. It's not that he's cheap. It's that he's old, or so he explained to me. Maybe he is just cheap.  
  
"How are you?" he said, his voice becoming tender and solicitous. I sighed amd turned my face to bury it into his chest, not really wanting to think about how I was. He stroked my hair, lending silent support.  
  
"Crappy," I admitted.  
  
"Why?"  
  
I instinctively went into list mode. "Glory made Tara crazy and is going systematically through my friends, Giles made me be an authority figure and Dawn might get taken away."  
  
Actually, it's just occured to me that I could live with that, if it meant she was still alive. And I was. All we have is each other, and we don't have any guarantees of that.  
  
"Dawn might get taken away?" he said, and I mentally applauded him for immediately jumping to the part of that which gave me most sleepless nights. It's like Mom, in a way. To have Dawn under all this threat from Glory and then think I might lose her to something so incredibly mundane as foster parents... it's weird.  
  
"She hasn't been going to school," I confessed, guilty at the thought that I hadn't known, that I hadn't thought she might be acting up and hadn't noticed she wasn't going in. But then, I didn't think I'd have to notice she was lying to me. Well, I didn't want to think she might be. I'm beginning to understand how Mom spent so long clueless about the slaying.  
  
"Does she know?" he asked.  
  
"That she might get taken away? Yeah. I'm hoping it might sort her out a little, you know? Convince her to attend."  
  
"It will," he said. "She's smart."  
  
"I don't... want her going to dad," I said quietly. Not a good thing to admit, is it? I don't want my little sister to live with our father. He hasn't really given me much reason to think he can parent her better than I can. He still hasn't got in touch.  
  
Angel kissed my forehead, and in it, I could feel him remembering his father. "That's not so bad," he said. "Is that why Giles made you be an authority figure? To Dawn?"  
  
"Yeah," I replied. "I wanted him to do it for me."  
  
"You do it for him," Angel said.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're an authority figure to him. And the rest of the gang," he pointed out.  
  
"You make me sound like some sort of despot," I complained.  
  
He laughed. "That's not what I mean. I mean when you tell them to do something, you assume they'll do it."  
  
"I guess..." I said thoughtfully. "But I'm the Slayer."  
  
"So why can't you use that?" he said.  
  
"Because I'm Dawn's sister," I said softly.  
  
"And still the Slayer," he said firmly.  
  
"Anyway, I *don't* get listened to always," I said. "I told Willow she shouldn't go after Glory and she did regardless."  
  
"They know you'll come through for them," Angel said matter-of-factly. "Now why was Willow going up against Glory?"  
  
"She brain-sucked Tara," I said sadly. Tara used to be quiet, but when she did talk she was kind and knowledgeable and occasionally funny... and now when she talks she's crazed. I've seen the madmen Glory's created before, but only ever the 'after' picture.  
  
"I'm sorry," Angel said, after a pause. He hasn't met Tara, but I've mentioned her. And he likes Willow.  
  
"She might never get better," I said. "Willow's determined she's going to take care of her."  
  
"Maybe she will," he said. "It's not your fault, Buffy."  
  
"Isn't it?" I said. "It's someone's. I haven't taken Glory out yet."  
  
"Buffy," he said admonishingly, "not for want of trying."  
  
"Willow said to me... before she went after Glory, she asked me when we'd go after Glory if she didn't know. If it'd be when it was Dawn. And I said it'd be when we had a chance, because even with Will's magic she couldn't beat Glory..."  
  
"Sounds sensible," Angel said, his voice a soothing counterpoint to my worried, fast delivery.  
  
"But what if we never have a chance?" I said, turning around to look at him. "I have no idea how to beat her and she's going through my friends one by one until she figures out who it is."  
  
"Then you'll make a chance," he said firmly. "I know it, Buffy."  
  
I almost asked him how, but I know how... Angel finds it hard to imagine a world where I've been beaten, where I'm dead. I'm the same; he's survived so long, it's difficult to think either of us could lose, forever. And yet, I'm about to.  
  
I don't know how to go after Glory. But she knows how to come after me. 


	23. Sleeping In Your Dreams

TITLE: Sleeping In Your Dreams  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 20  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Forgive Joss, for he knoweth exactly what he does and is mean.  
TIMELINE: After 'Spiral' and 'Over The Rainbow'.  
SPOILERS: As above.  
SYNOPSIS: Buffy's catatonia bears an uncanny relation to sleep. At least in my 'verse.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: As with the last one, the fact that all these eps are cliff-hangery carry-straight-on types will be quietly ignored.  
FEEDBACK: *Dignified begging*  
RATING: PG  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Slayers aren't known for their running away. It's less 'he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day' than 'she who fights and dies doesn't really matter because there'll be another one along in a minute'.  
  
So, the running-away isn't really a big part of the Slayer mentality. But surviving is. Making sure my family survives is. So running away was actually easier... if not, in the end, safer. You can't run away from stuff that'll just run after you.  
  
I guess someone will come after me. Or, just come for me.  
  
* * * * *  
  
A while ago, a couple of kids died, only because this is the Hellmouth they weren't kids and they were a demon which had my mother under a spell to try and burn me at the stake. I guess I repressed that part, because my standout memory of that time is sitting quiet with Angel, on a bench in the park, and him telling me I'd taught him he had to fight because there were things worth fighting for.  
  
I remember feeling both sceptical and flattered at the time... he's so old, so smart, and he was telling me that *he'd* learned from *me*. Buffy Summers, dread student and rogue Slayer; but Angel had learned from me. I never told him how much I'd learned from him.  
  
Maybe he could teach me what I'd once taught him, and reminded him of not so long ago... things were worth fighting for and I could fight for them.  
  
Somehow, even the hard things were easier then. I saw it all differently: things were good and I could help them or they were bad and I could kill them. Angel was my grey area, my exception; if he were in my life now, that'd be the norm. He'd probably be better in my life now.  
  
I guess that was my associations with that place - being taught, being helped, being given strength. Just being with Angel.  
  
It's a pretty nice area. It's even nicer with Angel in.  
  
By the time I slept with him, we weren't normal couple-y in the sense that we'd go on dates, and eat off each other's plates (if he ever ate off a plate), and be able to pick a decent movie to watch together, but we were comfortable with each other. Okay, we usually met in the cemetery, but we'd go straight into each other's arms... we wouldn't hang around and make awkward conversation the way we once would have.  
  
This was like then. The moment I saw him I stood up, and before I knew it I was held tight against his chest with his smell of leather and soap and some slight fear all around me, and suddenly I could breathe again.  
  
He couldn't chase it all away forever... but he could make it okay for a second or a minute or however long I stayed wrapped in his arms, and that was all I ever wanted. Somewhere - someone - I could run to so the world couldn't get in for a while.  
  
And when it did get in, he could tell me it was okay and I was still a good person.  
  
"Dawn's gone," I mumbled tearfully.  
  
He led me over to the bench and sat me down, like a kid. It wasn't patronising - it felt nice. Safe. The past few weeks, I've been a mom, a Slayer, a rock on which everything else rests and I have to carry the burden. Angel was treating me like something precious that needed looking after. His treatment felt like someone taking the weight off my back for a while and then taking some of it away... so when I got my problems back, because I had to, it'd feel lighter and I'd know that at least there was someone else helping me carry it.  
  
"What happened?" he asked, pulling me close again. He's not a tissue carrier, but he's always been good about letting me snivel into his clothing. He had on a soft, black shirt and the smoothness of it against my cheek made me cry harder... here I was, dreaming with the man I loved, surrounded by softness, while my sister was God knew where in the clutches of a crazed hell goddess.  
  
"Tara told Glory Dawn's the Key. We had to run... and these knights came and tried to kill her and Giles got shot by an arrow and we called Ben and he was Glory and she took her," I rambled.  
  
"Ben?" he asked. I was surprised he understood the rest... he's had practice.  
  
"He's a doctor... training... I was trying to save Giles, but he shares a body with Glory and then she was there..."  
  
It adds up, really. I never meet new people but that they're somehow connected to evil. I never *like* a guy but that they're somehow connected to evil. Angel, who fights the most intimate link to it I know of; Parker, who was evil, if only in a frat-boy kind of way; Riley and the Initiative; Ben, Glory's other half.  
  
I always feel like I should *know*, and I never do... but how could I have known about Ben? The knight didn't even tell me there was a guy involved until now, and how could I possibly have...? But Ben knew. I trusted him, and he came knowing he might be putting Glory right next to Dawn.  
  
"It's not your fault," Angel soothed, rubbing my back in light, sweeping circles.  
  
"She's my responsibility," I protested. I should have gone further, gone earlier, done... *more*. My baby sister. I let her down.  
  
"You'll get her back," he said. Right. Because Glory's a god I can't beat; but Angel knows better than anyone how far I can go when I have to.  
  
I just don't know if I can anymore.  
  
"I don't know how to face her," I said. "We were lucky, or we wouldn't even have been able to run." That truck; it was like divine intervention or something, bearing down on her, taking her away from Dawn and me. I hoped she'd be crushed against the windshield like a bug. She wasn't, of course.  
  
She lived, to tell the tale in blood. We weren't the only ones to suffer. Those knights - whoever they were - they wanted to kill Dawn. They would've killed her, because she's the Key and they only see that, they don't see the way she giggles when she hears music she likes and watches thunderstorms avidly, but with one hand clutching a stuffed toy. They don't see her as *her*.  
  
Maybe it'd be easier if I didn't. Giles said he was proud of my heart... I'm all heart. Broken, bleeding heart. Broken, bleeding knights scattered all over the road. They didn't deserve to die like that; oh, it was probably quick. But it was probably just one quick sweep for her, like they were nothing. Not a chance to go down fighting. They spent their lives warring against her... we were on the same side, really. We were just coming at it from different angles.  
  
Not that there would have been much co-operation going on, considering I killed a bunch of them. Self-defence is an excuse, but it's just barely adequate... they were human. I've never been so directly responsible for human deaths before... and it didn't even occur to me, as I kicked them and killed them off the Winnebago.  
  
They probably had mothers. Like I once did.  
  
There've been ones I've wanted to kill... but it never really lasted. Except for Faith.  
  
I guess I finally joined that club I threw at Angel. I murdered somebody. A lot of somebodies.  
  
Will he think differently of me? Will he love me less, now I'm not the spotless champion of the innocent I'm supposed to be?  
  
I never loved him any less for those he killed.  
  
"The knights..." I said, looking into his eyes. "I killed some of them."  
  
He looked at me thoughtfully. "Humans?"  
  
I nodded wordlessly.  
  
His eyes filled with a deep sorrow... but he still looked at me with love, and I understood he was feeling *for* me. It never goes away, that stain, I know from him. It changes you. He would have liked me to be spared that.  
  
He kissed me on the forehead.  
  
"Sometimes... it has to be done," he said slowly, and I realised he'd done it too. Killed people that, by rights, he should have protected... does being human alone automatically mean we have to protect someone?  
  
Maybe it shouldn't, but for us it does.  
  
He must have read my thoughts. "It's hard to accept. But some people... humans, don't want protection. I don't know if that means they don't deserve it, exactly, but... if they're doing harm... killing..." I heard a rueful laugh. "I know I sound kind of like a cult. But some people, you don't have to protect."  
  
"It doesn't make it easier to kill them," I said. "Or have killed them."  
  
He said, "If it did, then you'd be in trouble. You'd start judging who did deserve it. That's not our right." He smiled sadly, his eyes soft and deep. "I realised that."  
  
The lawyers... that seems like a long time ago. I feel like a different person to the one that was so shocked to hear of that. I see the point more... the need. And also, the horror.  
  
"Did you find Cordy?" I said, playing idly with one of the buttons of his shirt. I felt - not better exactly, because words and hugs, even Angel-words and Angel-hugs, don't soothe guilty-murderer-dozens-dead feelings, but a little lighter. He got through it... I can do it too.  
  
Lighter enough to tackle his problems, at least. I wonder if it helps him the way it does me, to have this place for just us... when I dream with him, I feel better about things. His perspective reassures me and his love calms me. He gets it, gets me, in a way nobody else has really managed. Swoony romance-novel hyperbole, but... a night when my soul meets Angel's is a night when I sleep well.  
  
"Yeah, and she didn't need the worry," he said, sounding faintly disgusted.  
  
"What?" I said, surprised. He'd been pretty worried last time I saw him. Other dimension, pretty scary stuff.  
  
Okay, no thinking about other dimensions. That way lies badness and making Angel's shirt even soggier.  
  
"They made her a princess or something," he explained.  
  
Cordelia as a supreme ruler? It doesn't bear thinking about. Because it makes me think - high school.  
  
So I picked the other disturbing part of his sentence.  
  
"They?"  
  
"The demons of Pylea," he said, like that made sense. Well, it did... there was portal stuff a'happening and Pylea was probably where Cordelia had gone, and thus where he had gone after her and call me selfish but what if he couldn't get back?  
  
Granted, it would appear the Dreams Network runs off an inter-dimensional satellite dish, but while Angel's soul is the best part of him, it's not the only part I'm fond of. Maybe it's part of super-sensitive Slayer senses, but... however hard I try to pretend he's the person holding me, I never can. Even in here, some part of me realises, acknowledges, that this body isn't Angel, not in the classical sense. Who he is here is mostly Angel's soul and partly my memories of him, I think, and it's not physical, so while this is the only substitute I'll accept... it's still just a substitute. And okay, the real thing is usually a couple of hours away, but he's *there*. I know I can hop a bus or call and... he'll be there, to look at me the way he does and hold me the way he can and make it okay.  
  
It's not something I think about. It's just something I feel better for knowing.  
  
"Pylea, huh?" I said, "and they made Cordelia a princess. I bet you can't wait to just hurry up and stay."  
  
"It has hidden depths," he said dryly. "Our native hates it there. I don't want to stick around to find out in any more detail why."  
  
"Where'd you get a native?" I said curiously. I had a bad feeling he was going to say something like 'lives in LA' and then I'd have to feel mad because doesn't Earth have enough of our own demons without importing?  
  
"He lives in LA," Angel said, and right on cue I felt mad. "I've told you, I think... kareoke demon? Green, loud."  
  
"Right," I said slowly.  
  
"They don't love the humans in his home dimension," he filled in. "We're not staying. Although..." he sounded wistful.  
  
"What?" I asked, a little alarmed.  
  
"Their sunlight doesn't harm me," he said quietly. He stroked my hair as if on a reflex... he said to me once that I was his sunlight. I think he meant 'warm and bright' rather than 'I get burnt'.  
  
But my sunlight-ishness aside, I've always known how much, of everything, he misses the sun. It reminds him, more than anything else except the feeding, how human he's not; everybody else gets life from the sun, he gets death.  
  
I don't know that I'd really be able to blame him, in my heart, if he chose to stay somewhere where one of his fondest wishes is a reality.  
  
"Maybe you *should* stay," I suggested tentatively.  
  
"No," he said, but he still sounded a little sad, "it's not where my work is."  
  
"You could find new work," I said, "for the chance to be in the sun."  
  
He stayed very still for a moment. Then he ran a finger down my cheek, tilted my face to his, and kissed me very gently on the lips.  
  
"What's sunlight worth if you're not in it?" he said, and then he was gone.  
  
When Angel slipped out of the dream, I waited for a while and then made a command decision; not to follow. 


	24. Dreaming My Life Away

TITLE: Dreaming My Life Away  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 21  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Nah, I can't think up something like that, I'm a fluffer. Ask Joss about it.  
TIMELINE: During 'The Weight Of The World' and after 'Through The Looking Glass'.  
SPOILERS: As above.  
SYNOPSIS: Slightly different; Buffy and Angel meet in her subconscious. Hopefully it'll be self-explanatory.  
FEEDBACK: You know how dehydrated people like water?  
RATING: PG-13 for possibly disturbing imagery.  
  
  
  
  
  
There's nothing that is capable of caging a Slayer except herself. Other people? I blow right through them. Bend metal... contort my body into fantastic positions... fight me into a corner and I use it to gain purchase to hit back from. All in the name of freedom.  
  
Freedom of body, but never of self... duty, Slayer and sisterly, binds me more surely than chains ever could.  
  
One moment. One moment when it was all clear... it would be easier if Dawn were dead.  
  
I killed my sister.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I turned away from my mom's bedroom - did she always sleep in a grave? - forgetting that still-fresh agony for a moment. I already quit on Mom; Mommy's already gone. Free.  
  
It's a relief; one less to worry about. One less to give up on. Why do I protect all these people when I can't even protect my own sister? Not from Glory. I've been hoping, avoiding what I know is true... the best fighters know their limitations.  
  
I've come up against mine, and they hit like a two-by-four to the head. Every time, she beats me. She snatched my sister out from next to me, from under my wing.  
  
And it was *okay*. I wanted it. I let it happen.  
  
My fault. Go *away*, Willow.  
  
There's one place I know I can be safe from her; the one place she can't follow me, because she never could. She listened to me talk about it, rejoiced and sympathised with me at appropriate times, but she never understood why I was there. Why I kept going there, going back only to stumble out, confused and hurting and... loved.  
  
I stepped inside my room - teenage room, exactly as it was before the scent of my pain hung bitter in the air and the ghosts of our giddy happiness lurked, tangible because that happiness was killed so comprehensively - and he was there.  
  
Half my Angel, saddened by leaving me, and half hers, not realising he'd ever have to.  
  
Safe haven, who knows about killing your precious, baby sister.  
  
"What's going on?" he said warily, watching me with hunger and a little, uncertain fear.  
  
I ignored his words... when did we ever communicate best with words? Our lips met and our tongues twined and our hands explored, voracious in delicious, forbidden recklessness.  
  
What's one more of my loved ones dead to my failings?  
  
At least this fire will burn hot and ecstatic before it burns out.  
  
Dawn barely burned at all... she was just learning how to, how to live, before my flames consumed her. A Slayer burns bright and furious and scorching before the fire is extinguished... it attracts others, and that it attracts it destroys.  
  
My mother, dead. Dawn, dead. Giles, Willow, Xander; their lives given up to mine, to what was made of it, forced into it, against my will.  
  
Angel, his skin almost warm under my touch, bleeding the living fire out of me and replacing it with one, deep in my belly, that screams only for him. His life taken long before I was a flicker in his being, but his soul - his eternity - sacrificed to my greedy, limited mortality.  
  
Out, brief candle.  
  
He would die for me gladly; die for me and around me and because of me. If I killed him now, with a stake or with my flesh, heart, soul melting seamlessly, blissfully, into his, he would not object; would even hand me the stake, or lie calm-needy beneath me while I took my fill of his body.  
  
I know it as surely as I know that if he needed it, desired it, I would lie motionless and rapturous as he drank away my lifeblood.  
  
He pushed me away and I could only imagine the picture I made; my black tank rumpled, caught up and exposing my stomach - a sign of submission in dogs and wolves, I remembered vaguely from some documentary, showing the animal had given up - where my jeans were half-unbuttoned and riding low on my hips.  
  
A picture, I should think, not so dissimilar to his. His shirt was ripped straight down from top to bottom, hanging off his broad shoulders, exposing a scratched chest. I stepped forward, back into the circle of his arms, if he'd lifted them to me; he didn't, just groaned low in his throat when I bent my head to the shallow wounds I'd inflicted and slowly licked the welling blood from him.  
  
He was as agitated as me, as desperate to give and take back what I had given to and taken from him; more so, because my uneasiness was lifting as I slowly realised the truth. Death is my gift and I offer it around myself freely, to my natural, intended enemies and those who I have been fool enough to allow myself intimacy with.  
  
It left an eerie calm descending over me, over the scene. The only sound, which until now I hadn't realised had been corrupted by my heartbeat sounding unnaturally loud in my ears, was the soft laps of my tongue and the rumbling I could feel deep in his chest.  
  
Eventually, he set me away from him, keeping a firm grip on my upper arms... whether to keep me close and in contact or hold me away I don't know.  
  
"What is this?" he said, his tone a gravely mixture between anger and want. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"  
  
I was going out the way I wanted to; taking him with me. I ran a finger down my neck, lazily circling the racing pulse at the base of my throat. His gaze followed, like hot, bruising fingers against my skin.  
  
Is happiness here happiness there? The only thing I can think of that would eclipse Glory is Angelus. If he came for me...  
  
I deserve no other death than to see the face of the man I love contorted in hatred as he rips out my veins. If Dawn is dead, there's no reason I shouldn't let him.  
  
I don't want to tell him that. I don't need his pity; I don't want his comfort.  
  
I don't want to be understood, to be told it's okay, it's understandable. I want to *forget*... to slip into darkness and have it slip into me and never slip back into just barely existing. To cauterise this wound, counteract this fire that eats me up inside to out. I want to escape.  
  
I don't want to leave this place.  
  
"You," I answered succinctly and kissed him again. He was hard against me, all of him, exactly as I craved... I've never been soft, I don't need softness. I need to be taken.  
  
I need someone else to be in control, even if all they're controlling is me.  
  
He growled against my mouth; this time I was the one who pulled back. He was in game face, fangs glinting in tandem with golden, fierce eyes. I smiled in satisfaction... as long as it's not his face, the angelic face I associate with nothing so much as love, this doesn't have to be emotions.  
  
Guiltguiltshameguiltterrorguiltguiltguilt.  
  
Was this what he felt when he screwed Darla? This overwhelming need for oblivion... why can't he recognise it in me?  
  
"Do you know what the demon in me looks like?" he asked. He wasn't touching me now - in fact, he seemed to be avoiding me, my touch, my gaze. We were circling each other; slowly, but like feral predators. Like wary, frenzied lovers.  
  
"I'm looking at it," I told him. What sort of a question is that? I know the demon that lives in him as intimately as I know the man.  
  
He laughed harshly. "This isn't the demon, Slayer. Not as it truly is. I saw that today."  
  
He darted in, grabbed me; in one swift, fluid motion he had me turned around, my back pressed to his front. My hands were captured in front of me and I stiffened against him... I don't know if it was in terror or delight.  
  
Then it *was* in delight, as he bent his head and nosed at my throat, where his mark still remained. He licked up the column of my throat once, sensuously, making me conscious of the rough, velvety texture of his tongue on my skin, preparing me for his teeth in my flesh.  
  
His lips were at my ear. "And you're not ready for it," he breathed.  
  
He let me go; I turned, confused. He was still close but his face was smooth again; human, unwelcome.  
  
This face makes me feel again; makes me want to cry. Makes me not want to give up.  
  
That's what I'm not ready for. Trying again.  
  
"This isn't who you are, Buffy," he said. "You're a Champion."  
  
"You don't know who I am," I hissed, "not anymore. You have no idea what's happening to me out there."  
  
"Your friends are trying to get you back," he said. He reached for me; I jumped back, like a spooked rabbit, evading his touch. "It's not over yet."  
  
I stopped, looked at him. "Only on a technicality. Glory has me beat, Angel."  
  
"Only you has you beat at the moment."  
  
I barked-laughed, the sound loud in the still room. The atmosphere was charged, still, but not with the electricity it had been... with his tension, as if he were fighting for something. For me.  
  
It wasn't working. "I need a little more than fortune cookie wisdom," I said bitterly.  
  
He reached for me again and this time I let him touch me. The contact was soothing... and inflaming, as always. Passion, my other constant; something to live for, perhaps.  
  
Just not enough. Not without him to share it with.  
  
"You have everything you need," he said softly, persuasively.  
  
Everything I need... once, I would have said that was him. My strength and the one I turned to for his strength; the smarts to balance my energy.  
  
But if I no longer had the energy to go on, I no longer had the energy for this fight. I nodded, once... acquiescing, if to no more than one last try.  
  
He took my hand and led me out of the room. We watched Buffy - me - replacing books on the shelf. Pausing. Thinking... what I thought, the bad thing. The thing that doomed Dawn. When I killed her.  
  
I pulled my hand away from his, half-hating him for making me come back to this - for reminding me that everything since then comes back to this - half-loving him for the same reason. He faces the worst parts of himself every minute; why should he allow me anything less? Why should I allow myself?  
  
He cupped my cheek in one hand, turning me around to face him.  
  
"Go with Willow," he commanded softly. "Trust her. Trust me."  
  
Then he was gone and she was there again, calling for me.  
  
I answered.  
  
* * * * *  
  
He gave me the strength to hear Willow, in the end. I cried in her arms, wishing they were Angel's... but for once, it didn't matter all that much. I didn't know where Angel was; but I knew it was with me. 


	25. Dreams Are Like Angels

TITLE: Dreams Are Like Angels  
SERIES: Only When I Sleep 22  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Joss did it! Joss did it!  
TIMELINE: After 'The Gift' and 'There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb'.  
SPOILERS: MAJOR. If there's anybody left anywhere who doesn't know the big news, stop now.  
SYNOPSIS: Not so much a meeting as a visit...  
DISTRIBUTION: Ooh. A finished series. I think everybody's asked who's going to, but anyone else, feel free g.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: My original idea of how to end this series was pretty much shot to pieces with the ending of season 5. (It was going to be happy g.) I think it might actually work better this way, because there will not be a continuation of the series into 6/3... I just don't have the time or, really, the desire. Thank you everyone who's expressed an interest, in whether it will carry on, or by sending feedback; I would not have finished this series if you hadn't convinced me you were enjoying it.  
FEEDBACK: Come on. Please. It's the last one.  
RATING: PG  
DEDICATION: This is for everybody who's read this series the whole way through. I know it was probably annoying to have to wait so long for these last few parts; I hope they were worth it!  
  
  
  
  
  
  
You'd think I'd be used to dying by now. It's never quite the thrill ride various religions promise. Neither, this time, was it really the rest I'd hoped for... no bright lights or family (Mom) guiding me into the next world.  
  
But neither is there nothing. It's not just blankness or blackness. I'm still me. I'm a me I can barely recognise, because the lack of worry and stress deal's worked out, but... me. I guess that's not so bad.  
  
Angel once said he sometimes felt he lived in purgatory; I asked him what that meant and he explained it to me. The place where people go after they die, that's not heaven or hell, that's... before heaven and hell. That's just nothingness, really. You don't know where you are or where you're going.  
  
I'm in purgatory, then. I'm a little resentful about that. How long have I spent Slaying? I always knew the work was its own reward, knowing I'd kept the world safe was enough, yada yada yada, but I thought there'd be *something*. The celestial equivalent of a big gold watch and a handshake before retiring to a place like Florida, only with harps and clouds.  
  
I've put a lot of thought into this.  
  
That was Before, though. I've already got it classified as then and now... real and not-so-real.  
  
The not-so-real would be life. I remember, but without total clarity; the emotions are faded and I recall my life as if it were a stranger's. Only some things are as clear as ever - the biggest things, my family and friends.  
  
Dawn. My sister, my daughter. Did I die for her, or the world, or me? All that matters is that she's safe. Alive and safe to live. I hope she does.  
  
Giles, Watcher-father-friend. I hope he doesn't think that he failed me... I hope he sees that it was his influence that made me do okay. I think he'll be okay; he always understood me better than I ever realised.  
  
Xander, Willow. The family I built myself. They never quite let themselves realise, I don't think... hell, I never really did and I should have. We knew I would die young, but we didn't talk about it, never acknowledged it. I never made sure, so that when I went, they'd know I loved them.  
  
I'm getting almost emotional now, but it's not quite... true. It's like - before I was on one side of a paper wall, and the lights that danced on the other side, casting shadows that I could see but not make out, were truth, beauty, understanding... all that. Philosophy stuff. And now I'm on that side, and I see more than I ever have, ever could - but I feel less than ever, because now it's the emotions, the ties of being human, that are the indistinct, fluttering shapes.  
  
A convoluted metaphor, but it's the best I can do. Even language is fading.  
  
I saw something in the distance - relative distance, because it's approaching at a massive speed. No sooner have I seen it than it's beside me, and I can recognise my mother.  
  
"Mom!" I threw myself into her arms. My mother... *there's* the emotion. This I feel vividly, holding her, being held by her, this cornerstone of my existence I'd thought lost to me.  
  
Except... her embrace is not exactly as Mom's was. It's both infinitely more comforting and completely less, and I pulled away.  
  
"Mom?" I said again, and she smiled at me. Mom-smile, with Mom-beauty and ethereal glow.  
  
"In a manner of speaking," she said. I knew that manner wasn't 'woman who gave birth to me' when I heard that voice; a slight echo followed it, almost indiscernible, as if she weren't the only one speaking. As if many spoke through her.  
  
Oh my God.  
  
Literally.  
  
I wondered if I should bow or curtsy something. I thought I should, and then I thought... whatever this was, God or Goddess or the Powers That Be...  
  
Well, they'd screwed around with my life quite a lot and I wasn't quite ready to be worshipping.  
  
"That is an interesting thought process, young one," she (She? He? It? Them?) said, sounding amused.  
  
I almost glared, but I did refrain from that. Okay, I wasn't going to fall on my knees, but I wasn't about to be rude, either.  
  
"I take this form to reassure you... to remind you of what awaits," she ('she' will have to do) said.   
  
"What awaits?" I asked, a little dismayed. Awaits what? After how long?  
  
"There is one more duty you must fulfil," she announced. She laid her hand on my cheek, and I felt immediately soothed... loved. "The vampire. Our Warrior."  
  
Ah, yes. The *only* thing that is as real here as it ever, always, was.  
  
If this is heaven, surely my Angel should be here?  
  
"Even now, he learns of your death," she told me. "We have given you contact with him, over the past months, to lead you to this one moment. Without you to anchor him, he will fall again; and this time, nought will prevent it."  
  
"Except me," I murmured, looking her in the eye. Yes, I understood now. All this time, we'd been dreaming of each other, with each other. Sharing each other's subconscious, so that now, when I came to his grief-stricken dreams for the last time, *he* could understand, and believe; that I was safe, and happy, and always with him.  
  
She smiled, queenlike but in some way also homely. "Yes. You will give him to understand that he could not have stopped this."  
  
I almost laughed... so like Angel, to blame himself. He hadn't even been there; truthfully, all that had kept me going some times was the times he had, in my dreams.  
  
The dreams had been my strength; now one last dream had to be his. For so long... I once thought an eternity with him could never be enough. It follows that an eternity without him would feel like... well, an eternity.  
  
She interrupts my thoughts, her voice commanding. "Go to him now. Show him. Comfort him."  
  
I nodded; slowly, her image began to fade as the outlines of a room bloomed up around me.  
  
Then her voice sounded, right next to my ear, even as she disappeared.  
  
"This time is not for him only, little one. Take your own comfort where you will."  
  
Like a free pass with a big rider; you can do what you like, but then you can't do anything again, ever.  
  
Hadn't we already had that? One night, one night that was everything but which left everything in tatters that wound inextricably around us.  
  
His bed was next to me, and he lay sleeping on it, the sheet at his waist. It left his bare chest exposed, and one of his bloody hands, showing the evidence of his grieving rage. He was only ever demonstrative at the biggest things... most times it was a touch, fleeting but sure, or the flicker of an eye; meant only for me to understand, but I think in practice only I ever noticed.  
  
His face drew me the most. Even in slumber, it was twisted in anguish. His face was slightly grimy - maybe from coming back from Pylea, because it hadn't escaped my notice that this was his bed, in our... his dimension - and the tear tracks were unmistakable.  
  
So many tears... my love. My loves. I never meant to make them cry.  
  
I reached out to touch him, and to my dismay and horror my hand passed straight through his flesh. It was creepy on a level even I hadn't known existed... watching it. The actual sensation was only tingly, the normal feeling I got around him, touching him, only intensified, but not in a bad way.  
  
The other sensation I was aware of was falling... as if my essence was going to sleep, even though I no longer truly had a body that required it. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them I was still in Angel's bedroom, beside his prone form; but this time my hand rested lightly on his cheek, traced his strong features, and I knew we were safely in the dream realm.  
  
My touch awoke him pretty fast. He opened his reddened eyes, bleary with hours of crying, and their deep brown depths focused on me... at first unbelieving, then wanting nothing more than to believe I had come to him.  
  
We reached for each other at the same time. I had a keen sense of his arms... the conscious, emotional part of me they'd granted reprieve to do this furiously memorising what it felt like to be wrapped in his cool, adoring embrace.  
  
Surely not even heaven could hold this grace?  
  
He was murmuring my name, over and over again in a feverish litany... his hands stroked over my hair, my back, my face, anywhere he could reach. He pulled away the barest minimum distance, still running his fingers over my face.  
  
"It is you... Buffy, it is... love..." He looked like he believed almost against his will; suddenly, against mine, I got a flash of hell, of him being led to believe I was there only for me to disappear.  
  
"It's me, Angel," I said softly. I know I couldn't push it... and also that They wouldn't. However long it took him to accept, we would wait, and I could luxuriate in the feel of him near me.  
  
"You're dead," he said simply, his chocolate eyes betraying his wounds... the tear, deep into his soul, where I'd been. I could almost *see* it... and as I stroked him in return, somehow I was able to feel for that cut, for that loss, and soothe it with the evidence and promise of my presence with him.  
  
"I'm sorry," I said.  
  
"Don't be sorry," he said, vehement but quiet.  
  
"It's not your fault," I told him, and I saw the flicker in his eyes; he wouldn't have brought it up, the guilt he was feeling, felt it to be petty and unimportant. He never did quite get that there was little more important to me than how he felt. "I had to. Do you understand? Not just for Dawn."  
  
He gave a small half-laugh half-sob. "For you... I hope you're at peace, Buffy."  
  
Suddenly desiring more contact, I leaned forward and kissed his forehead, resting my lips on the crown of his head. He stayed still, his chest heaving and his hands strayed tentatively to rest at his waist. "Never without you," I muttered. "I need you to be at peace, okay? I need you to go on."  
  
I heard another muffled sob, and I cradled his face in my hands.  
  
"This can't break you, Angel," I said. "You're more than me."  
  
He raised his tear-stained face to mine. "You're all of me."  
  
I shook my head wordlessly, gazing down on him... he knows what he can do, alone. I was just his impetus - it's humbling to think that I inspired him in the good he's done. He just needs to believe that.  
  
"Carry on," I ordered gently, rubbing the tears away with my thumb, the way he's done with me so often. My hands seemed small against his face.  
  
"I need time," he whispered.  
  
"Yes," I said. "Mourn me, Angel. Then do your good stuff for me, all right?"  
  
He nodded... slowly, a little unsurely, but I could feel his resolve, the steel in the core of him. Angel would be okay, without me.  
  
Would I be okay without him? My hands trembled, as it came to me, that he had his friends - his family - and mine, to help him. And I would be without that, with only...  
  
The memory of *this*, as he became the aggressor and kissed me. The feeling of this, kissing him, loving him, feeling his love as an almost tangible thing enfolding us... I kissed him back passionately, tasting him, my hands roaming across the hard planes of his body once more. My tongue swept into his mouth and I pushed him back on the bed.  
  
I made love to him, softly, kissing away his tears, feeling his tongue rough on my skin licking at mine. His hands moved over me, caressing, ostensibly for my pleasure, but I know that he was memorising me... imprinting the feel of me in his mind and hands even as I did the same.  
  
How can I exist without this? How did I live without it? This glory... being connected to him, together with him, his body and soul bleeding into mine until I can't tell what's him and what's me - until it doesn't matter, because we're one.  
  
We finished on each other's names and hushed declarations of love. As I cuddled up next to him, we both knew it couldn't be long before this favour was once again denied us. He held me fiercely, clutched me protectively, with unbelievable tenderness, sorrow and love.  
  
I hope he can remember that love because there, finally, it was. The bright light beckoned to me. Called to me, almost as loudly as he does. He's prettier than the light... but I understood that I had to go. I was a whispered 'I love you' and a feather kiss on his lips, tasting his sadness as he wept again, hating having to evade his hands as he reached helplessly for me.  
  
Then I was gone.  
  
  
END 


End file.
